To combine the unity of a central plan with the direction a church needs, plan the space as an oval, set across the axis to widen the view of the altar, or along it to lead the eye towards it.
The state bed
At the end of the apartment of state, in the bedchamber of state, set the state bed: the richest piece in the house, its tester high under the ceiling, its curtains, valances and headcloth of the richest stuff, with the chairs and stools of the room covered to match; it is a bed of honour more than of sleep.
The formal apartment of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries led from the saloon through rooms of increasing privacy to the state bedchamber, where the bed stood, often behind a rail, at the climax of the sequence. Only the most honoured guests slept in it; the owners slept in lesser rooms beyond.
The bed was the most expensive thing in the house: its hangings cost more than the frame many times over. Marot’s designs show the tester with its carved and covered cornice, the plumes or vases at the corners and the deep valances; Kent’s bed at Houghton has a great scallop shell over its head.
Related rules
Let the wall of a façade curve in plan (concave, convex, concave) so that the front answers the street, the light and the space within, and the order bends with it.
Make the stair of a palace a processional space: one broad flight rising to a landing, then turning back in two flights either side to arrive at the principal floor beneath a single great vault.
Design the furniture of a principal room with the room: the chairs, settees and stools covered in the stuff of the walls or the bed, the tables and glasses drawn to the architecture of the piers and the chimneypiece, so that the room and its furniture are of one manner and one date.
In the formal room, stand the furniture against the walls and leave the middle of the room clear: a pier table (with its glass above) between each pair of windows, the sofa facing the fire, a chair either side of the chimneypiece, the chairs ranged round the walls in a line with the dado, to be brought out when wanted and put back after; and keep each wall symmetrical about its middle, its chimneypiece or its windows.
Make the parterre oblong rather than square, since figures somewhat oblong look better on the ground than square ones; later practice made it as broad as the front of the house and about twice as long.
parterre oblong; later practice: width ≈ house front, length ≈ 2 × width
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The state bed”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/state-bed. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.