LAURA ASHLEY
WELCOME TO BEDLAND |
Superior quality bedroom furniture, beds and accessories for the discerning shopper direct from the bedland factory at discount prices.
Luxury beds and bedroom furniture
What is a bed? Webster defines it as "a piece of
furniture on or in which one may lie and sleep." Most Americans take beds for granted
because we just assume that everyone who lived had something comfortable and soft to sleep
on. Well, not everyone had a Serta Perfect Sleeper when they were growing up.
"The earliest beds were shallow chests in which the bedding was placed. The first
attempt at a soft basis consisted of ropes stretched across a wooden framework."
(Bertram, 64.) That does not sound comfortable by today's standards. But to go a step
further, read this quote from group of English villagers:
"Our fathers, yea and we ourselves, also have lain full oft upon straw under
coverlets made of dogswain or hop harlots and a good round log under their heads instead
of a bolster or pillow. If it were so that our fathers or the good man of the house had
within sever years after his marriage purchased a mattress or flock bed, and thereto a
sack of chaff to rest his head upon, he thought himself to be a well lodged as the lord of
the town, that preadventure lay seldom in the bed of down or whole feathers, so well were
they content, and with such bare kind of furniture: Pillows were thought meet only for
women in childbed. As for servants, if they had any sheet above them, it was well, for
seldom had they any under their bodies to keep them from pricking straws that ran oft
through the corners of the pallet and raved their hardened hides." (That was taken
from a sixteenth century description of a village in Britain.) (Bertram, 65.)
In the late fifteenth century the panelled bed-head was created, and that evolved into the
Elizabethan four-poster. Later in the sixteenth century there were truckle beds for which
servants or children could sleep in. It is the like the lower portion of a modern day
trundle bed which can be shoved under another bed during the daytime. Then there were
stump beds which had short posts and no canopy. Moving on to the eighteenth and nineteenth
century there were tent beds which were less costly than the four-poster bed. (Bertram,
66.) Then in the early 1900s the low bed generally had a head board and and foot board.
There are many other types of beds in between these centuries not mentioned. For more
information on the history of beds and other furniture see my list of references.
Before the mid-nineteenth century it was not uncommon to find children sharing beds with
their parents or with other children. This practice was being questioned because some
doctors thought that it was unhealthy. (Cromley, 125.) There was an increasing trend
toward the idea of letting children be children. They have their own identity and so why
not accomodate them instead of forcing them to be adults so soon. With these new child
psychologies came child sized furniture. (Calvert, 86.) Beds for babies and children were
very important in the first two centuries in America. (Ormsbee, 111.) There were cradles
and small beds (trundle or truckle beds). Take a look at some of the children's furniture
designs in 1997. Children's needs have become an entire industry in the nineteenth
century.
In the Greenbelt Museum, the children's bed is a single (also called twin) bed. It is low
to the ground, and has a headboard and a foot panel. There is nothing about it that is
especially childlike. It was probably meant to be used until the child left home or
married. Ann Neville, a former resident of Greenbelt relates her bed story: "It was
terrible! My Grandparents were taking care of me, and I just had a crib until I went to
kindergarten and found out all the other kids had beds! I complained and grouched and made
their lives miserable until I got a bed. It was a regular full-size single bed. It had an
oak finish frame, and I had it until I grew up and left home."
In a home furnishings book from 1935, there is a short segment on children's rooms. It
says that the furniture should be comfortable for the child in size. The author mentions a
type of furniture that has "collapsible legs that can easily be lengthened as the
child grows." (Rutt, 211.) In the Better Homes Manual of 1931, it is suggested that
there be different types of beds in the girls room and the boys room. In the girls room
the single bed can be made of natural hardwood or light painted wood or metal. In the boys
room, the bed single bed was in dark wood, dull finish, or dark painted finish. (Halbert,
443.)
How were beds decorated? Beds have been through trends of simplicity to elaborate
ornamentation over the centuries. In a 1937 interior decorating manual, it says that the
headboards and footboards are not as decorated. "Many decorators in certain cases
omit them entirely" and instead, decorate the bed with a pretty bedspread and
pillows. (Whiton, 674.) The bed in the museum is fairly plain in its design. The headboard
is one rectangular solid piece of wood, and the footboard is cross-patterned.
Superior quality bedroom furniture, beds and accessories for the discerning shopper direct from the bedland factory at discount prices.
