Made in England
Katherine Sorrell visits the foundry which is still hand-making beautiful metal beds in the traditional way
Katherine Sorrell visits the Cornish Bed Company
CHURCHILL won the war from his. Frida Kahlo produced extraordinary paintings from hers. And Mae West joked that she did some of her best work in hers. Who wouldn’t love to hear the stories their beds could tell? Be it plain and simple or lavish and ornate, a comfortable bed is the foundation for a good night’s sleep – and perhaps even the place where one could run the country or create a remarkable work of art.
Deep in the heart of Cornwall, down some pretty, winding lanes and not far from the beach, is one of the country’s last working (and possibly only) foundries producing metal beds. The Cornish Bed Company’s products are individually hand-made to order by a small team of skilled craftsmen who, between them, have racked up more than a hundred years’ experience.
Their beds range from the sweet and simple Maud, somewhat reminiscent of a boarding-school or old-fashioned hospital bed and the company’s best-seller, to the fabulously ornate Clifton, which features grand arches, decorative floral fixings and an opulent mix of iron and brass (think Bedknobs and Broomsticks and you’re on the right track).
“We hand-craft Victorian beds in the same way the Victorians used to make them,” CEO Mark Tremlett says proudly. “The Victorians were very good engineers, and what they made, they built to last. That’s what you get when you buy one of our beds – an authentic, durable design made in an authentic way.”
The history of the metal bed goes back to the first half of the 19th century, and is a tale that combines the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution with the Victorian passion for hygiene. One of the many developments of the Industrial Revolution was the ability to make cast iron in large quantities at affordable prices. This, combined with the desire for beds that could be easily cleaned and would not harbour “vermin” – in other words, the ever-present and hard-to-eradicate bed bugs – contributed to the rise in popularity of metal beds over wooden ones.
As the beds were made in separate pieces – the head and foot ends connected by a pair of side bars – they could be easily dismantled and exported to colonial markets around the globe.
Early metal beds were relatively plain, though they might include brass knobs on the posts, and were usually painted black, or sometimes white. As manufacturing methods advanced, however, the designs grew more elaborate and the humble bed became a status symbol, with the most basic models reserved for servants and children, and the fanciest a sign of the household’s relative wealth. In iron or brass, they featured glass, mirror, mother-of-pearl or painted china, with highly decorative end panels including bosses, scrolls, gothic flourishes and sometimes even a clock.
The heyday of production was in the mid-19th century, from around the time of the Crimean War (1853-56), when Florence Nightingale influenced the nation with her new ideas on cleanliness. By 1875 around 6,000 brass and iron bedsteads were being produced each week, half of them for export.
There were many manufacturers, most of them based in Birmingham, each with their own designs that were promoted by catalogue and updated every year. One advertisement, for a firm called Hoskins & Sewell, which at the time had branches in New York and London as well as Birmingham (and, incidentally, held the contract for beds aboard the Titanic), ran as follows:
“Cleanliness, cheerfulness and beauty are the reasons why metal is supplanting wood in bedsteads. Physicians endorse metallic beds for sanitary reasons, and the fact is well known that whatever adds to the beauty and cheerfulness of the bedchamber conduces to health and sound repose.”
The Cornish Bed Company was