Ethiopian Bed with Plaited Leather

Leather strips woven tight, and four legs turned like chess pieces.

This bed with plaited leather comes from Ethiopia in East Africa and dates to the 19th century, in wood and leather. Across Ethiopia, households slept on beds like this, strung with hide on a wooden frame, light to build and handy for keeping sleepers off the floor. The frame is wrapped in bands of hide at intervals along each rail, and the interlaced strips form a dense, mottled brown surface. Stout posts rise above the rails with rounded tops, and pegs pin the corners. Seventy-four inches long, 48 deep, 19 high.

A mattress would only get in the way of the view.