As you may already know, the largest size bed being made back in the early 1800’s was a double size. So when someone wants a king size, we convert whatever original double size they select from our inventory into a king size. That’s done by cutting the bed apart in integral places and adding additional…
Thank you to a customer who was kind enough to share this grand old tradition of sleeping outside on a screened in porch . Iron beds on porches were not uncommon during the Victorian era. The homes were designed specifically with areas for beds. Why……because of the hot humid nights during the summer months. There…
French campaign iron beds were portable and used originally, by the French during their on going military campaigns. Up until these collapsible beds were invented, the officers had to sleep on the ground in bed rolls just as the enlisted men did. The soldiers never had the luxury of a bed that elevated them “off”…
In the past 40 years, I come across just about every imaginable shape bed you can think of. I can remember the first time I saw French Campaign iron beds and how fascinated I was with the practicality of it’s use when the armies of Europe went on “conquering” campaigns. But the bed that is…
Yesterday I posted a blog that showed the casting on a bed of the “Lone Star” emblem of Texas, encased in a “horse shoe”. It was right our of the wild west and a definite Texas phenom. This casting came on a bed that we found close to Chicago Illinois. Chicago had it’s share of…
It’s commonly thought that back in the early to mid-1800’s most of the iron beds that were being made were coming out of the tri-state area of Ohio, Pennsylvania and W. Virginia. So you certainly wouldn’t expect a northern foundry to be producing a bed with a western flare to it. Then how did such…
The use of “Symbolism” in the castings of iron beds was a strong continuous theme throughout the 1800’s. Small independently owned foundries made beautiful molds of floral arrangements, animals, and mythical characters as symbols, their patrons wanted in the 1800’s. One of the most popular symbols back then, that most beds employed in some way…
eaves |ēvz| plural noun the part of a roof that meets or overhangs the walls of a building. That’s what your dictionary will definite the slanted roof and where it meets the wall in that upstairs bedroom you so desperately want to decorate……but feel somewhat limited because of the low wall. Quite a few of…
As some of you, and the list of those who do, gets smaller every day, remember….”Arsenic and Old Lace” was a great old comedy classic movie from 1944 staring Cary Grant. Well this blog doesn’t have a dam thing to do with that movie………. What it does have to do with is “old lace” and…
The following photo is one of the purest examples of an Art Nouveau bed that I’ve ever come across. The photo to the left of it is of a stair case in the Victor Horta Museum in Brussells. The strict definition of Art Nouveau is: A reaction to academic art of the 19th century, it…