The Buonanotte Valentina bed by Ceccotti Collezioni fulfills the Italian furniture company’s philosophy, beautifully and evocatively borrowed from the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti: “Constantly risking absurdity…the poet like an acrobat climbs on rime to a high wire of his own making.”

Buonanotte Valentina. Designed by No© Duchaufour-Lawrance. Manufactured by Ceccotti Collezioni.

Here the poet is designer No© Duchaufour-Lawrance, who has crafted a bed out of solid American walnut-a bed that, like much of Ceccotti’s Modern Sense ’08 Collection, borrows from the languid lines of Art Nouveau and marries that decadence with simplicity. If this sounds impossible, then take a look at the Buonanotte Valentina. The high headboard features curved wooden slats-the edges of the slats containing some of the unbridled enthusiasm of the wood’s sensuous curves. Facing the bed head on, the wooden headboard appears rigid and flat; however, looking at it from any other angle reveals the S curvature of the bed’s headboard. The platform base too plays with a combination of rectilinear and contoured surfaces, from the straight spine hugging the floor to the rectangles with rounded edges that serve as the base in the front and back of the frame. The play here with aesthetic binaries can de dangerous: badly realized, this contradiction can be absurd. But the risk here is averted, the Buonanotte Valentina achieving a balance as precarious and daunting as a tightrope walker.

The bed can be further transformed with an optional covered headboard, wrapping the slats in leather-while still maintaining a wooden frame. It’s like a taut canvas stretched over a well-constructed scaffold, wherein the covering actually calls attention to what lies beneath. And what lies beneath, like everything else produced by Ceccotti, is masterfully built with that attention to detail we’ve come to expect of the Italians. The name tells much of what dreams you may have when sleeping in this bed-dreams foretelling a succession of good nights. If it were music, the Buonanotte Valentina would be reincarnated as the operatic notes of Offenbach’s Barcarolle from Tales of Hoffman-hauntingly yet serenely beautiful.