Forget me not

When COUNTRY LIFE’s Henry Avray Tipping spotted a 17th-century four poster languishing in a Herefordshire attic in 1911, he set off a chain of events that saw the bed leave its ancestral home and land at The Met in New York

- Carla Passino

THIS is the story of how an English bed conceived by a French designer ended up in an American museum. It starts in Paris, where a young Huguenot, Daniel Marot, was working as an engraver at the Manufacture des Gobelins. He had just begun making his name, reproducing the works of Jean Bérain, one of Louis XIV’s leading designers, when, in 1681, the King started persecuting the Huguenots, eventually revoking the Edict of Nantes, which for the previous 87 years had given French Protestants the right to practise their religion. During those troubled years, Marot fled the country and moved to Holland, where he championed the flamboyant, ornate decorating style that had been popular at Versailles. Soon, the Frenchman's work caught the eye of William of Orange, for whom he created many of the interiors of Paleis Het Loo in Apeldoorn. When William and Mary ascended to the British throne, Marot followed them across the North Sea, working primarily at Hampton Court Palace, where he designed, among other furniture, theatrical beds full of architectural details for the State Rooms.