Design, build, and travel as you explore intimacy, domesticity, and politics through the physical and digital world of an Antique Chinese Wedding Bed.

Where do modern people spend almost a third of our life? Our beds! In addition to facilitating sleep and relaxation and its association with marriage and sexuality, the bed also is the centerpiece and likely the most expensive item of furniture item in our bedroom. Across cultures, from medieval Europe to imperial China, beds served as tokens of status that marked families’ success and material wealth in increasingly commercialized and stratified societies. In the modern era, beds have drawn scrutiny from sociologists, sexologists, and social critics interested in questions of gender, family, and sexuality. A historical bed might also capture other meanings: its pathways through production, circulation, and consumption might illuminate global trading networks in lumber, labor, and finished commodities. It might reveal (or allow us to imagine) the transmission of craft knowledge, family formation, wealth accumulation (or dissipation), and social mobility. With these possibilities in mind, our team will investigate and restore an antique Chinese wedding bed. Our work will combine digital tools with humanistic research methods to facilitate a cultural history that engage questions of intimacy, nuptials, curation and conservation, and global trade and cultural exchanges.

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