Burges Bed
   

 


First mentioned in Burges’s diaries in 1865 and completed in 1867, this bed is of mahogany, painted red and ornamented with carving, gilding and stencilling, inlaid with shell and inset with paintings on glass. An inscription in Gothic lettering around the headposts reads ‘WLELMVS:BURGES:ME:FI:FECT:AD:MDCCCLXVII’, and the initials ‘W’ and ‘B’ are painted on the headposts and set into the bedposts at the foot of the bed.



 
     
The main decorative feature of the bed is Henry Holiday’s oil painting of Sleeping Beauty on the headboard, in which Beauty is shown asleep on a bed similar to the one which bears the painting. Burges’s imagery is often found repeated in different locations. In this case an almost identical design for Sleeping Beauty was used as a marginal illustration for ‘The Day-Dream’ in Burges’s copy of Tennyson’s Poems of 1848. This was one of a number of watercolour miniatures painted in the book by one of Burges’s assistants, Thomas Manly Deane, in 1875 (Strange Genius, p.78).
     
   
 
Below the headboard’s Sleeping Beauty five small panels show sleeping servants and maids, whilst the panels along the sides of the bed depict the brambles and woodland creatures which encircled the enchanted castle.
   
On the footboard are shown two of Burges’s dogs, inscribed ‘Bogie’ and ‘Midge’, possibly also guarding the enchanted sleeper. Burges was very fond of his dogs, and Bogie was one of a large number of Burges’s pet dogs depicted on the ‘Dog Cabinet’ (1869) in the day nursery of Tower House (Crook, p.324).

 
Other decorative features on the bed include winged lions at the top of the head posts and hearts menaced by spears in each bedpost. The heart and spears image is used extensively in other decorations and furniture by Burges and is thought to be an alchemical or Rosicrucian symbol. Burges was was evidently aware of both masonic and Rosicrucian ideas and imagery (he was a member of the Westminster and Keystone Lodge of the Freemasons from 1866), but there seems little evidence of any deep involvement with the Rosicrucians, and his design in all fields displays an eclectic use of imagery and symbolism from many different sources.

Although the bed was originally designed for Burges’s rooms in Buckingham Street, it was later moved to Tower House in Kensington, where the decoration of the room matched the rich red of the bed. Its effect was further enriched by the use of a Chinese mandarin’s robe as a bed cover.
 
  William Burges died in this bed on the 20th April 1881 after an illness lasting several weeks. Two of his visitors during these last days were Oscar Wilde and J.A.M.Whistler . The Cecil Higgins Gallery also owns a postumous caricature of Burges in bed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, although the bed in the sketch bears little resemblance to this one.
     
 
     
 

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