Bedroom Furniture – The Origin Of Beds
Beds are arguably the first item of furniture to be invented. The earliest beds were little more than piles of leaves or straw on the ground, but archaeologist have discovered remains of stone beds dating from the Stone Age. Apparently, straw and leaves were placed on these stone shelves to protect primitive men from drafts on the ground.
In the West, it seems that wooden beds did not exist until quite late. But by the Middle Ages, humans started making beds and other items of furniture out of oak. While oak was difficult to shape, it was very hard and durable. It did not get damaged easily, and it strongly resisted insect and fungal attacks. Even the crudest oak bedroom furniture could last a family for several generations.
Unfortunately, oak was not only the perfect wood for making furniture, it was the perfect wood for building pretty much anything. This included the large sailing ships used for war and colonization from the 13-th to 17-th centuries. The oak forests were quickly cut down and oak furniture quickly became restricted to the rich and wealthy.
From the mid-1600s onwards, softwoods like beech became widely used for making furniture. While it did not last as long as oak, it was relatively softer and easier to work with. A skilled furniture craftsman could easily build many times more items of beech furniture in the same time it took to craft an oak bed.
Unfortunately, by the 1800-s beech forests were going the way of oak forests, despite being much faster growing. Fortunately, alternatives like pine and cherry wood were available. Both these woods released a pleasant fragrance when freshly cut. This made them somewhat unique – there was a stronger demand for unfinished pine bedroom furniture and cherry wood furniture than for the finished items.
Of course, both pine and cherry wood quickly went the way of beech and oak before them. Fortunately, plywood and fiberboard was invented in the 20-th century. Both of these materials allowed the use of cheap, low-quality wood to build furniture. In the case of fiberboard, it could even recycle existing, unwanted furniture.
Plywood is made from thin sheets of low quality wood. These sheets of wood are glued together with their grains crosswise at 90 degree angles. This structure made them surprisingly strong, strong enough that they could be used to build beds and wardrobes. The earliest plywoods were actually made from fairly good quality wood (at the turn of the century), and were invented because they could be made in shapes impossible for solid wood. These early plywoods were expensive novelties, used for rather limited roles like the running boards of cars. Modern plywoods have come a long way (or perhaps we should say fallen a long way) since then. Modern plywoods are now made from cheaper wood than ever, although it must be admitted that the technology used to make them is more sophisticated than ever and they are a lot more hardy than the early plywoods.
Fiberboard is another modern wood substitute. It is made by turning wood into powder, then compressing it in a resin matrix under high temperature and pressure. It can be made from cheap wood, but unlike plywood it can also recycle otherwise unusable pieces of wood. On one hand, this is ecologically friendly. On the other hand, the resin matrix is made from irreplaceable hydrocarbons (oil) …
Nowadays, if you want to be environmentally friendly, you should look for pine bedroom furniture made from pine grown in plantations. While these types of furniture are more expensive than those made from wood substitutes, they also last much longer. For those with the spare cash, solid wood furniture is a worthwhile investment.
The beds we sleep on have come a long way since our primitive ancestors. Not only do we have more than just beds in our bedrooms now, these beds are made of better and more varied materials.
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