Now Lie in It

“The bed . . . is our whole life. It is there that we are born, it is there that we love, it is there that we die.” --Guy de Maupassant

If furniture could speak, beds would replace celebrities on talk shows.

As it is, beds have taken over the coffee table as the subject of three lavish volumes, illustrated with splendid photographs of beautiful or interesting examples. All provide a history of beds as well as a close-up look at how the other half sleeps.

The heftiest and most comprehensive of the books, The Bed, by Alecia Beldegreen with photographs by Thibault Jeanson (Stewart, Tabori & Chang; $45), covers the subject from the cradle to the grave, neglecting neither the dog bed nor the analytic couch. Beldegreen explains how the highly elaborate bed cultures of the ancients went out with Rome, replaced in the Dark Ages by more primitive arrangements: “To make the bed” derives from Saxon times; it meant to bundle twigs into an animal skin.

A king-sized assortment of subsequent beds is pictured, unto the “sleep restraints” devised by NASA for the space shuttle. There are even some arty shots of laundry- and sheet-suspenders, elastic bands that prevent the bottom sheet from coming undone and which I plan to try.

Designer Diane von Furstenberg traveled all over the world to create Beds, with photographs by Stewart O’Shields (Bantam Books: $35), an eclectic armchair house tour, accompanied by a mediative essay. “Since beds reflect life and life is a journey, here then is a journey through beds . . . to discover the intimate universe of the one person who owns that bed.”

Von Furstenberg has chosen her photographs well; there is scarcely a page that I wouldn’t cheerfully move into. A chapter on artists’ beds is particularly successful, as it includes several remarkable works, such as the hefty bronzes of Adam and Eve that flank Fernando Botero’s footboard, and surrealist Max Ernst’s “Cage Bed and Screen.”

The Frenchwoman’s Bedroom (Doubleday: $50) is the work of an American, Mary-Sargent Ladd, who is a descendant of the portrait painter John Singer Sargent, the wife of a French baron and a former editor of Vogue. Most of her subjects are elegant and accomplished, ladies who are different from you and me--unless you take “the cure at Bobet’s thalasso therapy,” or have your sheets “sponge ironed” daily.

The ladies also are different from one another--aristocrats and artists, hostesses and businesswomen, some of whom even make their own beds. Their personalities emerge vividly in discussions of topics as intimate and silly as napping and preferred bedtime attire. The interviews comprise a fascinating field study in haute anthropology, the raw material for a contemporary Proust to fictionalize from his bed.

These books combine the pleasures of window shopping and a visit to a museum. The trouble is, in Los Angeles today it’s hard not to be reminded of the people who lack the comfort of the simplest bed. So I’m thinking about the unphotogenic homeless, sending a modest check, and hoping other readers will react similarly. Happy Holidays.