Different Types of BedsThe Historic Furnitures Design Influence On Classic Poster Beds Original Design Criteria

Canopy Classic Poster Bed: French couch bed or sofa bed introduced aroufid 1800, the curtain draperies supported by a wall fixture.

Celour: Early term that may be variously interpreted from old references to have indicated either, as is now accepted, the classic poster bed-head, or the tester (q.v.).

Field Bed: Term in use from the 16th to the 19th century. Also known as slope bed. Randle Holme noted it as a bed made `higher with an head' to fit under a canted roof, and a century later Ince and Mayhew showed a design for a single-headed couch or field bed, `the tester being to take off and conceal'd in the Recess, under the Seat'. The slanting top meant that the side draperies could not be drawn as curtains but had to be looped up. The bed was more lightly constructed than the four-poster, the entire arching framework designed for quick dismantling and packing. It was long essential for the fastidious traveller.

Classic Four-Post bed: Differentiated from a stand­ing bed in 18th-century trade cards by having a low head board so that classic poster beds pillars to match those at the bed foot were required to support the tester.

Furniture, Bed-Furniture: This was the term always used to cover all the draperies essential to the standing bed. From innumerable fascinating inventories of bed furniture a Hampton Court record is interesting, made in 1659 on the Protector's death. This describes a `bedstead with a sackcloth bottom, the furniture of rich incarnardine velvett imbroidered very rich with gold and silver conteyning, Three Courtines, Fower cantoines, deep Vallons and bases, fower capps of the same velvett and imbroidered suitable for the same bed. The ceeler and head cloth of the said bed is of rich cloth of gold with inward vallons, cases for the posts and lynings of the curtains and cantoines all of the same.' To protect the velvet the bed had also `three large Courtines of scarlet bazes being a case about the classic poster beds'.

This record is typical in including not only a variable number of curtains but valances above them with cantons or continuers to link these at the corners and with bases as lower valances below the bed frame. The caps were corner finials: dyed plumes were fashionable in these from the 16th century until well into the 18th, when urn or vase shapes might be used.

All parts of the furniture offered opportunities for embroidery heraldic, pictorial, story telling, or Oriental in the spreading, soaring tree-of-life style. Pictorial work was favoured for the valances which were often taut and easily viewed, and for day-time pillow beres or cases. Applique work and quilting may be noted. Blankets and coverlets of wool, silk and fur and sheets of linen or cheaper harden were used, with mattresses and bolsters and less frequent pillows. Mattress fillings ranged through down, feathers, flock and straw, under mattresses often being quilted. Rich families might also have summer furniture for the bed, as well as mourning furniture.

Half-Head bed: Generally assumed to mean the bed with a low panelled bed-head, as noted in Elizabethan and later records. Classic Half-tester bed, angel bed. From the end of the 17th century. The tester extending from the classic poster bed-head over most of the bed, so that it could still enclose the bed with curtains, but lacking foot posts. In the 19th century, when it was popular, it more usually extended over only the upper half of the bed. It was advertised in Georgian days as a royal bed. Press bed: From the late 17th century, a classic poster bed that could be folded away so that it appeared to be a cupboard. Typically the tester let down to serve as the cupboard door and there were drawers below for bedding. The name is also applied to the farmhouse and cottage classic poster bed boarded on three sides.

Stump Bed: The simple style of cheap bed used by the great majority, consisting of a wooden framework on four short turned legs. If it had a head-board it became a stump-end bedstead.

Tent bed: Simple version of the field bed with four posts and domed or arched canopy covered with tester cloth. Thus it looked like a tent when the curtains were drawn. Popular through much of the 18th and 19th centuries, and sometimes known as a sparver bed.

Tester Bed: Now applied to the canopy or ceiling over a bed. There seems to be reason to think that this and the celour were confused in early records, and the mistake has been perpetuated by more recent acceptance of this interpretation.

Truckle bed, trundle bed: From medieval days and still in use through much of the 18th century. A low bedstock on wheels, usually for a servant or child. It could be pushed under the standing bedstead during the day and at night too, for a good quality bedstead was of considerable height above the floor as slight protection from mice.

The Turn-up Bed: Georgian term for chair or sofa that could be converted into a bed. Several of these dual-purpose designs were patented around the end of the 18th century.

Children's beds: For centuries babies were swaddled and half smothered in attempts to protect them from the dusty, dirty world around them. Cot, cradle and crib were made large enough to accommodate thick mattresses and voluminous coverings and were furnishings of enormous importance and pride to the mother receiving congratulatory visitors at her bedside, celebrating the birth with cakes and caudle. Each had its own specific purpose, but the same trends may be distin­guished in the three forms and may help in dating what are novo in any case comparatively rare antiques.

Oak was used in the 16th and 17th centuries (originally, one assumes, widely supplemented by beech, elm, fruitwoods, etc.) with lesser late 17th- and early 18th-century approval for soft woods closely covered with braid-edged velvet or leather. Mahogany is noted in combination with cane through the later 18th century and into the 19th century, when the cheaper alternative was a soft wood, painted and grained to resemble oak.

Wrought iron with cast brass ornament was welcomed as a hygienic substitute in the 19th century. And always, of course, for the simple baby basket or bassinet cradle, wicker or osier was in wide but impermanent use. This, though never a collector's item, is to be noted in the ceramic miniatures of around 1800 that conveyed small congratulatory gifts to the mother. Some of these record the practice of covering the rough surface with draught-excluding quilting. Victorians concealed all vestige of the framework in many layers of coffered frills.

Cradles and cot in traditional styles difficult to date: Cradle associated especially with 16th-17th centuries, with handles for rocking, often oak; hooded type of cradle associated with 17th to early 18th centuries; early 19th-century cot, a cane version of the suspended cot.

In design and construction the collector notes the advance from the medieval hammered-up lidless box through the phases common to 16th-, 17th- and 18th-century joiners' work with subtle changes in carved detail, panel shaping, run moulding, etc. The base might be boarded but was often, like a bed, composed of cords, or sometimes of horizontal laths.

Changes in the outline of cradle and cot hoods may be some guide in dating. These included the rare wagon-tilt of the Tudor days, the flattish tops of the 17th century, the delightful ogee arch found in association with fielded panels in a Queen Anne specimen, the late 18th-century rounded arch and the Regency Gothic point. Similarly, the crib might show chang­ing outlines to its hood or dome of drapery comparable with the styles of contemporary beds.