There are many surprises in store for visitors to the British Galleries at London's Victoria and Albert Museum which are set to leave the visitor open-jawed.

The conversion of former storage rooms really amounts to a whole new museum-within-a-museum for the capital, telling the story of design in this country from 1500-1900 through displays of historic textiles, furniture, dress, ceramics, jewellery, prints, sculpture and portraits.

The 15 galleries created by the £31m recreation and refurbishment house 3,000 objects, most included for their aesthetic quality or rarity; that piece of embroidery or tapestry, stained glass or pottery is almost certainly the finest of its type to be found anywhere in the world.

Two-thirds of the objects have never been seen together before and bringing them together helps transform our understanding of each stylistic period. The visitor follows a roughly chronological course starting with the Tudors and ending with Queen Victoria through a forest of objects enjoyed by the well-heeled from each period.

Here is the wedding suit of King James; dolls, a sort of Barbie and Ken for the 1690s nicknamed Lord and Lady Clapham, along with their complete set of clothes; an extraordinary needlepoint hanging from Stoke Edith in Herefordshire, a unique record of a 17th Century garden, with its sparsely-planted tulips indicating how valuable the flowers were back then.

Here, too, are five period room sets, from a lovely early 18th Century drawing room taken from a town house in Henrietta Street, London, to the gaudy white and gold music room from Norfolk House of 1748-56.

Two of the most sensational objects are beds, a huge status symbol and a mark of great wealth when most people slept like dogs.

The Great Bed of Ware, which came from a grand late 16th Century coaching inn at Ware in Hertfordshire, has always been one of the museum's star attractions. It is mentioned by Shakespeare in Twelfth Night and could sleep six couples at a time.

The elaborate carving on the bedhead is scored with the initials of those who wanted to leave a more permanent reminder of their cavortings.

The museum's other great bed is a much grander object altogether, and cost the contemporary equivalent of a decent country house and estate. It was made around 1700 for the Earl of Melville, apparently to impress his guests.

The luxurious blood-red Genoese velvet and Chinese ivory silk hangings are the originals. The 18th Century rooms mark the time of the Grand Tours, undertaken by most young noblemen, and the objects collected together mirror the fact that British taste was looking further afield.

There's also a celebration of tea as 'the cup that cheers but not inebriates' which reminds the visitor that this brew so cheap, so British was once exotic and so unaffordable to all but the few, that it was the height of fashion.

As we move towards Victorian times and the Great Exhibition, new money and the need to flash the cash are evident in the gross, flamboyant and often very ugly vast edifices of porcelain and ornate pieces of furniture.

The Galleries are a triumph they are intriguing, educational and beautifully displayed. The British Galleries, Victoria & Albert Museum, London SW7 (020 7942 2000). Entrance free. www.vam.ac.uk.