cathouse beds

Styles & Periods of Iron Beds

One of the major things that help our customers focus in on the iron beds they like is familiarizing themselves with the different styles that were available 150  to 200 years ago. In that period of time numerous different Style Classifications came and went and beds seemed to have adapted nicely with all of them.…

cathouse beds

Selling Old Iron Beds Salesman Samplers

But back in the 1800’s how did stores or people that wanted to buy iron beds, see what was available. There were catalogs with pencil drawings of the different  beds a company offered. But the best way was to see a sample of an actual bed. But that wasn’t practical. Dry good salesman would travel…

cathouse beds

What Was Happening When Iron Beds Were Being Made?

Lincoln was in office and Billy the Kid roamed the wild west. There were two brothers named Wilbur and Orville who took to the skies at Kitty Hawk, and when President Woodrow Wilson announced our entry into the 1st World war, iron beds offered people the handmade craftsmanship and quality they had come to expect…

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Craftsman Iron Beds

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…

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Victorian Iron Beds

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…

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Deco Iron Beds

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…

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Casper The Friendly Ghost’s Iron Bed

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…

cathouse beds

“Sometimes Simpler Is Better”

In a city where people drive $100,000. cars and live in studio apartments , I’ve grown accustom to people asking what the most expensive or fanciest iron bed I have is. I’ve had people walk in my store and say they want the fanciest  bed I have, only to find out when we delivered it,…

cathouse beds

The Holiday an Iron Bed for the Movie

For close to 40 years we at Cathouse Iron Beds have been supplying the various movie studios, TV shows and production houses with the iron beds they’ve been using. This particular bed was one we did for the movie “The Holliday” with Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law and Jack Black. It was a romantic…