Period beds

Jeff L Headley

Well-known member
I have a question. With royalty it was a custom to offer beds to other royalty as a manner of respect. Among the first offering of the King was a bed ( elaborately adorned) when arriving in "America". Who would be subservient the one giving or the one receiving? Plus wouldn't you love to see that bed and I wonder about it's life 10 years later.
 
LOL, Yeah, I'd love to see the bed. To my knowledge, there are no examples of American wainscot (frame & panel)  beds that survive.
 
I have made many bedsteads and canopies  for many museums, The Governor's palace Williamsburg, Mount Vernon, The Carlyle House, The White House, plus too many others to mention including the person at the end of the block. I have copied Southern beds from New Orleans to Charleston SC North needless to mention beds from New England. Wouldn't a bed offered to an estranged dignitary be considered a campaign bed? 
My new idea is period dog beds    bow "WOW"
 
Jeff,
Wouldn't a period dog bed be a pile of straw or sacking?
I wonder if these visiting dignitaries didn't just all crawl in to bed together as bed sharing was pretty common back in the day. Maybe politics makes for strange bedfellows wasn't just a saying.
Mike
 
With the draw leaf table construction discussed on another thread pre 1500's and the legs being bolted together could this joining technique be from military campaigns for quick set up and removal of commanders beds (campaign beds)? I did see a bolted together day bed in Egypt a few years ago. When we set nuts in poplar bed rails we will add shims of oak on either side of the nut to retard future rotation of the nut. These shims serve two purposes besides the rotation of the nut idea it also works well to be able to shift your nut one way or the other with different size shims to line it up with the hole for the bed bolt.
 
They were also called field beds, for use in the field I suppose. You don't see many that are put together any other way. I assume it has to do with being able to move them, an assembled bed is a rather large object to get through a door. The short tenons would facilitate leaving the rope in the bed and not having to undo it completely when disassembling. All conjecture on my part.
Mike
 
What would one of General Washington's field beds have looked like? He probably kept one of them and turned it into a trundle bed. Wouldn't you? Who supplied it? He probably had a favorite cabinetmaker under his command who traveled in the Shenandoah Valley with him. He was among a party who was ASK TO LEAVE!!! from what is now Moorefield WVa after the King gave the same tract of land to two different entities, Lord Fairfax and Virginia.
 
Bolts and tenons? Regional techniques are what period construction is all about. What worked where and why. I know you see two bolts into Charleston SC bed rails (horizontal) but do you see it anywhere else in American furniture? And then what about double tenons? You will see double tenons on many period beds. What do you see in your area?
 
Mike, Thanks for the sites. I must be brain dead. I knew of this bed and have copied similar beds. I made a folding bed like this for Rose Hill Manor in Fredrick, Maryland 25 years ago. I guess to much time spent on beds will do that to you. Sleep tight and don't let the bed bugs bite(literally).
 
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