No photo I’ve seen evokes quite as much sorrow and despair as this one with a man setting on a bed at a “Poor House” in Perry County Missouri. If you look close, the bed in the photo is missing the brass treatment on the footboard that can be seen on the headboard. The corner…
DetailsNot long ago I was asked to help stage a house, with one of our beautiful antique iron beds, in the prestigious Malibu Colony on Malibu beach. They asked if I could come up with a bed that had a bit of a “WOW” factor. A bed that would be representative of the waves and…
DetailsBodie is a ghost town in the Bodie Hills east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Mono County, California, United States, about 75 miles (120 km) southeast of Lake Tahoe. As a bustling gold mining center, from 1859 to the begining of the 1900’s, Bodie had the amenities of larger towns, including two banks,…
DetailsI have quite a few people come to me for iron beds for their log cabin homes. Most of them have a preconceived notion that only Austere and Straight Line beds will work in the log home surroundings. Although the thought of a scrolled bed in a log cabin seems a little far fetched. Through…
DetailsThis is a classic statement I get quite often from customers coming to me for iron beds. They desperately want a beautiful antique iron bed. But they want the headboard of that bed to be low enough to fit under the window that is on the only wall that can accommodate their bed. What most…
DetailsMost people that are considering iron beds for possible king conversion, feel as though their options will be limited to beds with straight lines…… beds that can simply have a few iron tubes welded in to increase the width. No so. In this photo of an iron bed we converted for a customer, you’ll…
DetailsThroughout the 1800’s, iron beds came in double size (53″ x 75″), twin size (39″ x 75″), 3/4 size (48″ x 75″). What many people don’t realize is that there were Youth Size beds, between the twin and crib size. Youth size, were only about 31″ wide and sometimes as short n length as 54″. The…
DetailsFew things, throughout history, have survived like that of iron beds. They seem to have an indestructible nature to them. Because they are made of one of the strongest and most durable materials known to man, it’s not that unusual to see beds in “aftermath” photo’s of natural disasters. I have actually had customers that…
DetailsAs you may already know, the largest size bed being made back in the early 1800’s was a double size. So when someone wants a king size, we convert whatever original double size they select from our inventory into a king size. That’s done by cutting the bed apart in integral places and adding additional…
DetailsThank you to a customer who was kind enough to share this grand old tradition of sleeping outside on a screened in porch . Iron beds on porches were not uncommon during the Victorian era. The homes were designed specifically with areas for beds. Why……because of the hot humid nights during the summer months. There…
DetailsFrench campaign iron beds were portable and used originally, by the French during their on going military campaigns. Up until these collapsible beds were invented, the officers had to sleep on the ground in bed rolls just as the enlisted men did. The soldiers never had the luxury of a bed that elevated them “off”…
DetailsHere is a prime example how a little design sense, iron beds and ingenuity can turn an otherwise wasted space into a peaceful retreat. We all have our idea of how much space is needed to set up a particular size bed. Usually we want walking space around the perimeter of the bed so it…
DetailsIn the past 40 years, I come across just about every imaginable shape bed you can think of. I can remember the first time I saw French Campaign iron beds and how fascinated I was with the practicality of it’s use when the armies of Europe went on “conquering” campaigns. But the bed that is…
DetailsMany of my customers are looking for that first “big girl” bed, for their daughters. Because most people are trying to be conservative in their selection of a bed and may have some concerns about the duration a child is going to want what they’re spending their hard earned money on, there are ways of…
DetailsYesterday I posted a blog that showed the casting on a bed of the “Lone Star” emblem of Texas, encased in a “horse shoe”. It was right our of the wild west and a definite Texas phenom. This casting came on a bed that we found close to Chicago Illinois. Chicago had it’s share of…
DetailsIt’s commonly thought that back in the early to mid-1800’s most of the iron beds that were being made were coming out of the tri-state area of Ohio, Pennsylvania and W. Virginia. So you certainly wouldn’t expect a northern foundry to be producing a bed with a western flare to it. Then how did such…
DetailsThe use of “Symbolism” in the castings of iron beds was a strong continuous theme throughout the 1800’s. Small independently owned foundries made beautiful molds of floral arrangements, animals, and mythical characters as symbols, their patrons wanted in the 1800’s. One of the most popular symbols back then, that most beds employed in some way…
Detailseaves |ēvz| plural noun the part of a roof that meets or overhangs the walls of a building. That’s what your dictionary will definite the slanted roof and where it meets the wall in that upstairs bedroom you so desperately want to decorate……but feel somewhat limited because of the low wall. Quite a few of…
DetailsAs some of you, and the list of those who do, gets smaller every day, remember….”Arsenic and Old Lace” was a great old comedy classic movie from 1944 staring Cary Grant. Well this blog doesn’t have a dam thing to do with that movie………. What it does have to do with is “old lace” and…
DetailsThe following photo is one of the purest examples of an Art Nouveau bed that I’ve ever come across. The photo to the left of it is of a stair case in the Victor Horta Museum in Brussells. The strict definition of Art Nouveau is: A reaction to academic art of the 19th century, it…
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