Many people come to me with 3/4 size iron beds and want to know where they can have custom size mattresses made for them. First of all…… any mattress company will either make you a regular 3/4 size mattress or already have one that is readily available to buy. 3/4 size beds are not uncommon…
For those of you familiar with the store Restoration Hardware, I think we can all agree they do some great looking older vintage finishes. Not really your distressed setting by the barn for the past 200 years finishes, like we do on our iron beds. But some clean old looking finishes that are very rich…
We have had many customers with Craftsman style homes come to us for iron beds. Ever since we became aware of the Craftsman Period and what furnishings and finishes were appropriate, we’ve been trying to come up with earth tone finishes to make our iron beds blend better with their surroundings. Particularly the redwood earth…
The American Craftsman Style, or the American Arts and Crafts Movement, is an American domestic architectural, interior design, landscape design, applied arts, and decorative arts style and lifestyle philosophy that began in the last years of the 19th century. As a comprehensive design and art movement it remained popular into the 1930s. However, in decorative…
I had an old picker, who taught me the iron bed business, told me you could always tell the scarcity of an original antique by the amount of “reproductions” you see in the market place. There was a time when there was such an abundance of antique iron beds, that you saw no reproductions on…
The Victorian Era is a name for the period from 1837 to 1901, the length of the rule of Britain’s Queen Victoria. American Victorianism was an offshoot of this period and lifestyle that occurred in the United States, chiefly in heavily populated regions such as New England and the Deep South. The name was derived…
Although iron beds were made throughout the 1800’s, way before the Deco period of 1920 thru the 1930’s, there were beds being manufactured in the early to mid 1800’s that had a definite Art Deco look to them. I have to believe whoever designed these “before their time” beds , was definitely marching to a…
Although over the years I’ve been buying and selling iron beds to the entertainment community, none have a fonder memory than the scrolled black twin size iron bed I did for the movie “Casper”. It was a memorable one because it was the first time my first daughter, then 6 yrs old, realized what I…
Nearly 50% of all the iron beds we sell , we end up raising the headboard. Why? Because with todays pillow top mattresses and large Euro Shams, that most people have, if the headboard wasn’t raised……it would be hidden behind all those pillows etc. The majority of all the interior designers I deal with have…
One of the more popular things interior designers like to do when selecting a finish for their clients iron bed, is to match the materials that are going to be on the bed. Most of the antique iron beds I’ve done for the Ralph Lauren Co. over the years have been around specific material swatches…