Dejavu Iron Bed

Many years ago I went against my better judgment and allowed a client to talk me into converting a very thin gauge antique iron bed into  a modern king size. Because additional tubing needs to be welded into the width of the interior design, the tubing going across the top of the bed should always…

Jesse Slept Here!!!!!!!!!

Close to thirty years ago I was just getting started in the iron bed business. At that time I was living Washington DC, going to school at George Washington Univ. and doing all my antique buying within a comfortable “one days” drive throughout Pennsylvania, W. Virginia, and Ohio and a little in Maryland and Virginia.…

Country Living / Martha Stewart

I’m constantly and pleasantly surprised, when something like this happens……..because the antique iron bed she sent me was one we had sold to someone who then used it in the Country Living Magazine photo shoot. One of the funny things about this individual iron bed was the fact that the previous owner had refinished it…

Red Light District Iron Beds

This one has a rather colorful past, if we’re to believe the “picker” we got it from. He canvases the New Orleans area and said that it came out of the red light district over 175 years ago, and had been handed down through the family of the madam that supposedly owned and operated the…

Barn Red Iron Bed Why?

So why, you ask, would anyone in there right mind paint an antique iron bed “barn red”. Over the years of dealing in iron beds I’ve come across “hundreds” of them that had been painted a very distinctive “barn red”. But then I’ve also come across a number or iron beds that were painted white,…

Iron Bed Foundries What else did they make?

So it would stand to reason that a foundry wouldn’t just make iron beds, back in the 1800’s. If the bed market got soft they had to have other things that they could produce with the foundries they had. If one month was slow with iron beds…. maybe the easiest and fastest thing to produce…

Andrew Mellons Iron Butterfly Bed

Andrew William Mellon (March 24, 1855 – August 26, 1937) was an American banker, industrialist, philanthropist, art collector and Secretary of the Treasury from March 4, 1921 until February 12, 1932. This bed was said to have been a wedding present for his wife Nora Mary McMullen, from Andrews mother Sarah Jane Negley Mellon, who…

“Faces in Iron”

In the close to 40 years of being in the bed business I’ve only ever come across three other iron beds that had actual “faces” in the castings. This one is of a Victorian women with curly hair. Metal beds usually adorned themselves with scrolls and an occasional touch of brass. So to find something…