Chinese Canopy Bed with Cracked Ice Motif

Four-post bed canopy dressed in carved rails and a low latticed balustrade.

This canopy bed with cracked ice motif is from Jiangxi Province, China, and dates to the 19th century. It is elm wood. Once China slowly opened to visiting diplomats and businessmen, a trickle of antique furniture leaving the country became a flood that lasted through the 1980s, the 1990s and into the early 2000s. A sleeping platform is edged with a low open rail of rectangles, with latticed panels at the corners. Tall slender posts frame a deep carved valance along the top. Heavy legs end in curled feet. Dark brown, glossy. It is 84 inches long, 48 deep and 84.5 high.

A bedroom with a built-in sense of occasion.