The Queen’s Mahogany Bed

The Crucian artist La Vaughn Belle takes multiple approaches in her material meditations over broken pottery as a metaphor for a fragmented Caribbean identity. In 2017 her Chaney series was expanded with an additional 12 hand-painted porcelain plates created in a collaboration between the artist and Royal Copenhagen for an exhibition at the Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen as part of the National Museum’s exhibition Bag guvernørens spejle (En. Behind the Governor’s Mirrors). It was one of many events marking the centennial year of the sale of the Virgin Islands. During the exhibition, Belle discovered an intriguing connection: Danish Queen Margrethe II sleeps in an antique mahogany bed from the Virgin Islands, linking the historical and contemporary in a surprising twist.

The Chaney series, with its hand-painted porcelain plates, presents an imaginative landscape of ‘rooted errantry.’ Each plate, meticulously crafted during Belle’s residency at the Royal Copenhagen porcelain factory, features unique designs that reflect the Caribbean experience of fragmented identity caused by Danish colonialism. The porcelain shards in the Chaney series have been transformed into new compositions, offering a contemporary reinterpretation of colonial histories. Rather than idyllic or exotic portrayals, Belle’s plates embody the genuine experiences of Caribbean landscapes, altered by colonial encounters.

The exhibition at Christiansborg Palace included various pieces of antique mahogany furniture from the Danish West Indies. Yet, as the queen revealed, not an antique mahogany bed from the Virgin Islands in which she sleeps.