It never ceases to amaze me the variety of castings there were on iron beds back in the 1800’s. But during this holiday season I thought it most appropriate to share one that isn’t readily seen. It came in on a beautiful antique iron bed I’d bought back in the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania. It’s…
When I got the bed I had really inspected it until a few days later I was moving some of the iron beds from that particular shipment and I happened to notice it. The casting is of a mythical character I was able to pull up on the web called “Old Man Winter” the drawing…
Here is a photo of a iron bed casting, before it was sandblasted, and the same iron bed casting after it has been sandblasted and refinished with our Black Smyth finish. Iron beds get the name from the cast iron castings that hold the design element of the iron bed together. When you hear about…
Many people think iron beds are simply that……. iron tubing that is sometimes scrolled or curved to give a pleasant design to it. What most people don’t know is how intricate the “castings’ on an iron bed can be. True most iron beds don’t have the detailed castings in this photo. But all iron beds…
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,…
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 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…
Here is a photo of an antique iron bed we converted from it’s original antique double size, to todays modern king size.
It’s very easy to tell the popularity and collectability of an item by the number of reproduction of that item you see in the market place.
For all of you wine connoisseurs and vineyard owners…….here’s one of the more unique and collectible antique iron beds I”ve come across.