While the basics—a cushioned spot to rest and stay warm through the night—have remained the same throughout history, the details of what constitutes a bed has changed quite a bit through the millennia. Here’s a brief history of beds through the ages. In this photo, a plaster cast holds fossilized leaves from the oldest known mattress. The photo here shows amazingly well-preserved leaves and plant fibers from an ancient bed in the Hinds Cave. Made of plain wood (if you were a commoner) or covered with gold, jewels and ebony if you were of high social status, the simple platform bed was topped with a mattress made of wool cushions. Linen sheets and a stone or wooden head support added extra comfort. The Etruscan bed shown here is in the Vatican Museum. Typically made of heavy wood, the beds of the wealthy were raised high off the floor, sometimes so high that a step stool was required to reach them. Four-poster beds were created during this time, hung with heavy velvet drapes and canopies, which served to show off the owner’s wealth and also warded off drafts and insects. The mattress was thickly stuffed with down and feathers, and sheets were made of fine linen. As these beds were very expensive, they were treasured belongings and passed down through the generations. It even became common for royal or wealthy owners to remain in bed to receive visitors, eat meals and carry on business. Although not as lavish as some, the bed in the photo here is typical for the period. Once in bed, you’d cover yourself with a rough wool blanket—no fine linens for you. Since the homes of the poor were small and families were typically large, your bed might well be used not just for sleeping at night, but also for sitting or as a table during the day. This room is typical of a medieval peasant’s hut. For the wealthiest people, the bedchamber continued to be a popular spot to receive visitors and carry on business. The ubiquitous four-poster grew even more lavish and ornate during this period, with fanciful carvings, inlaid paintings, colorful trim, and luxurious, heavy fabric curtains to enclose the bed on all four sides when desired, along with a canopy that might be fabric or wood. Ropes or woven straps provided support for the mattress, which was generously stuffed with down and topped by fine linen sheets and wool blankets. Because these beds were so expensive, they were prized possessions to be passed down through a family’s generations. The fantastic bed shown here is called the Great Bed of Ware and is currently housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Large enough to sleep eight people comfortably, the bed was never in a private home but was created in 1590 as a tourist attraction for an inn in Ware, England. It was so famous during its day that Shakespeare included a reference to it in his play “Twelfth Night.” Amusingly, the bed has carved graffiti on the posts from those lucky enough to sleep in it hundreds of years ago. One of the biggest changes during the 18th century, however, was that the concept of the bedroom as a private space for sleep became firmly entrenched throughout all classes of society. No longer did royalty or the wealthy receive visitors in their bedroom, and it was no longer typical to have servants sleeping on the bedroom floor. This is a typical middle-class colonial bedroom. One striking advance to the bed during this time was the invention of metal bedsprings to support the mattress, instead of ropes or wool straps. While these gave more support and stability to the mattress, they were also annoyingly squeaky. This Victorian-era bedroom shows off the fussy style typical of the period. Although they had been invented decades earlier, it wasn’t until the 1930s that innerspring mattresses skyrocketed in popularity to become the mattress no others could compete with by the 1950s. This ushered in the use of box-spring platforms to hold the mattress, creating a far more comfortable and supportive bed than those used in earlier times. By the 1960s, mattresses and pillows were often made of foam instead of cotton or wool. Tempur-Pedic sold the first memory foam mattress in the U.S. in 1992. Memory foam mattresses have high rates of customer satisfaction. The picture here shows a typical middle-class 1950s bedroom.
