An Odyssey for the real thing

The last week has been largely spent delving into The Odyssey, and quite specifically the trees therein, which is exceedingly uninteresting to describe outside an academic context. One of the more famous scenes involving trees is Penelope's trick to ensure Odysseus is truly who he says he is.

When they were newly weds, or at any rate when he was building their home, he carved their bed from an old olive tree. When she calls a maid to bring him the bed, he turns on her furiously wondering how this could be. Only they know the secret steadfastness of their bed and so she is convinced that it is truly her twenty years long-lost, much beloved husband, Odysseus.

The description of the bed is rather detailed but I still can not conceive of how it is built.

A bush of long leafed olive was growing within the court, strong and vigorous, and in girth it was like a pillar. Round about this I built my chamber, till I had finished it, with close-set stones, and I roofed it over well, and added to it jointed doors, close-fitting. Thereupon I cut away the leafy branches of the long-leafed olive, and, trimming the trunk from the root up, I smoothed it round about with the adze well and cunningly, and trued it to the line, thus fashioning the bedpost; and I bored it all with the auger. Beginning with this, I made smooth the timbers of my bed, until I had it done, inlaying it with gold and silver and ivory, and I stretched on it a thong of oxhide, bright with purple.
Bk. XXIII.190-201, Loeb Translation A.T. Murray, Revised by George E. Dimmock

A friend in college who had successfully built bars in all his friends' apartments, decided to use his carpentry skills to make his girlfriend a bed. In the end, by which I mean graduation, the relationship did not last, but then they were not mythic characters for whom a greater purpose is dictated by fiction.

I went looking for images in the hopes that some creative individual might have made an effort to produce this bed which can not be moved. I could find nothing, but mostly noticed how uninteresting the vases, statues and sculptures appear in two dimension. The vases, which granted have never been my favorite, are nonetheless far more interesting when you have to walk around them to see the story told unfold. The beauty of the marble work is really lost if you can't gaze into the shadows of the detailed carving.

So, without knowing when, and despite the rain, I must somehow get myself all the way, to that far distant terrain of the Upper East Side,  into the Met to see some of these beautiful pieces in the incredibly gorgeous and well-lit new Greek and Roman Hall.