Elevating todays mattresses on old antique beds can often pose quite a dilemma. When antique iron beds were being made back in the 1800’s, the rail system that held the mattresses off the ground was at an average of 13″. Todays Hollywood and Harvard bed frames are only 5″ off the ground. This whole issue…
To understand the possible adjustments you might need to make to your antique bed, to use your modern mattress…..You first need to understand what was being used as a mattress and springs back when these beds were at their most popular in the 1800’s. In the 1800’s there was no such thing as a mattress…
If you were to come across any vintage photo’s of bedroom interiors, you would probably be amazed at how spartan they are. The factor that would probably catch your attention before anything else is the lack of pillows that were used and the method in which they were exhibited. Most of the time there was a solitary pair of pillows…
I’m often asked about what type of mattresses were used on beds back in the 1800’s. After a discussion of feather mattresses……their advantages and disadvantages, the topic invariably turns to what man used before conventional mattresses were used on bed frames. It is thought that during the Crusades, Europeans adopted the Arabic method of sleeping on cushions thrown on the…
As you probably know, the largest size bed being made back in the 1800’s was a double/full. And you probably know that these old iron beds can be converted to accommodate a modern queen size mattress. But did you know that it can be done in two ways: The most difficult is done by cutting…
As you’re all probably aware, iron beds elevate the mattress and box spring off the ground an average of 8″ higher than a conventional modern bed frame. There were a number of reasons people back in the 1800’s choose to elevate their mattresses so high. They were certainly not for aesthetics ……… but instead were…