Bed (Headboard and Footboard)

Elaborate beds and bed frames, often included in a woman’s dowry, were available to only the wealthiest members of colonial Spanish American society. In 1807 the traveler François de Pons described the magnificence of such “bedsteads, with deep headboards, showing nothing but gold, covered by superb damask counterpanes, and a number of down pillows in fine muslin cases, trimmed with lace.” Beds as elaborately carved and gilded as this rare surviving example from colonial Cuzco were used infrequently but kept conspicuously on view.