Mattress stuffing

[JacobReichwein]

I am redoing my room soon entirely 1800's style. Trying to keep it as authentic as possible. However, I was curious about what would be good for stuffing the mattress. I know straw was common, but I'm allergic!:(:( Any other things I could use, or any other ideas for the room general? All opinions welcome!
Thank you

[ShaunR]

Corn husks, and goose feathers come to mind, but they also can trigger allergies. Good luck with your project!




Shaun Riedell

[amity]

duplicate posting

[ryanbmm]

Mr.Rooney
what type of home is it that the room will be in with? a town home, a farmers home, out east or west? As for bedding- if you are a rich man as of 1800s time frame, you could use cotton...

[Citizen_Soldier]

Greetings,
I have a number of sources that I can share with you, but it'll take a few days for me to get everything gathered up due to my current schedule. Do you already have a great deal of antique furniture or are you starting from scratch?

Considering your allergies, I would recommend using a modern mattress on an antique bed if you can get one to fit.

Please don't hesitate to drop me a message if you have any questions.

Darrek Orwig

[Doug Harding]

Down comforters make good matress stuffing. I made a matress from ticking and stuffed a king size comforter into it. One king size comforter makes a real nice single matress. I use it on an 19th century "Franklin Spring Cot" It really works well in the cold weather. I'm getting ready to make one for my double rope bed and I'll probably use two kings to fill it. I put ties on one end so I can wash the ticking matress once and a while by taking the comforters out. You can get them at Walmart for a reasonable price. They might even go on sale in the spring.

Doug

[ElizabethClark]

Don't forget firm stuffing of wool or cotton or kapok... feather ticks go *over* a stuffed mattress, and the "classic" handmade mattress has not changed appreciably in some time. You can still get them, but they cost a good bit.

Consider economic level and location, too. A slum-dweller in the city has different access to materials and second-hand items than does a person living on the Kansas prairie.

And, since you're presumably still at home, consider what your parents are going to be okay with in home dec.

Now, since this whole discussion has great potential to veer into modern conversation, let's do try to keep it to sharing information on what was available, and how it was used, in the period. :) (And thanks to those who are doing so, thus far!)

[Spinster]

Depending on your region of the country, retted and coiled Spanish moss, or for the more prosperous, coiled and tied horsehair.

Next up for discussion: Ridding a room of bedbugs:rolleyes:

[VMurphy]

This sounds like a great undertaking! I agree with Elizabeth, that you must consider what your parents approve of. And remember that using moss, straw, corn husks, etc. also bring with them bugs, and mites :( as well as need much more care and replacement...high maintanace:(
You might want to consider a very basic, inexpensive modern mattress as a base, then as, was suggeested, get a nice feather mattress. They are very popular at the moment so are very available.(OVERSTOCK has great prices on high quality bedding/merchandise)
They were indeed a popular mattress for hundreds of years. My ggggrandmother used them, according to my father, and I grew up sleeping on one .
As for allergies, I believe the "modern" down matteress are treated in some manner to reduce allergies.
Good luck in your decorating scheme. We'd like to hear more about your plans. Do you have antique furniture, dresser, desk???
Regards
Vivian Murphy

[JacobReichwein]

My dad is really up for anything. He's actually the one o.k.ing the whole plan. I really hadn't thought about region or economic status, but I don't want my bedroom to be filthy and slum-like. So I'd say middle class :-P

[ElizabethClark]

Then you're looking at investments. :) Getting good repros of antique styles is going to be a process with a price.

You'll want a traditional stuffed mattress, such as the horsehair Mrs Lawson mentions, with a feather tick over it, and then the sheets and blankets. Good feather pillows are not hard to find, but allergies might be an issue.

[jstich]

With all due respect to all, and I don't want to offend anyone by pointing this out, but as a profesional chief fire officer I just want to caution you to consider the potential fire hazard you are considering. Even if you don't smoke and take precautions in your home / room, you can not eliminate ignition sources and you are talking about being in a state of semi-consciousness while laying on what we call a huge fire load. Just consider it.
Thanks
John Stich, 5th KY Co. B
(Battlion Chief, Lyndon Fire)

[VMurphy]

YES< indeed~ that is a very good point. And finding a mattress of "fiber source" that is truly period, means either very old, used, and musty, or reproduction which could be very expensive. If you are creative the decor wouldn't have to be real expensive. A simple four legged wooden table, ladder back chair painted a good color, perhaps a mirror framed in simple walnut or oak. It's not difficult to find a antique bed(which by the way might be yourmost expensive item). A simple wooden bench for extra seating. A braided rug on the floor, if you have a wooden floor, you could first paint it, then put down some braided rugs There are several suggestions on how to make rugs in period sources, or there are some available that are very good repoductions. If you want to get very industrious depending on your location and station, you could make a full room floor cloth and fasten it down under the quarterround.

Good luck and have fun :)
Vivian Murphy

[Spinster]

In looking at the various alternatives, it would be worth your while to contact Steve Abolt through this website http://www.cottonbalers.lynchburg.net/whoarewe.htm

While their primary impression predates the US Civil War by some 50 years, Mr. Abolt is a wealth of information on basic furnishings. He also fields a full late 18th century bedroom, complete with cherry rope bed, horsehair mattress, feather mattress, various woolen, linen, and linsey bed coverings, chests, trunks, tables, candlestands, and carpetings by both Pat Klien and Rabbit Goody.

He was helpful in the acquisition of my first 18th century rope bed. Since a second such bed has now come into the house, I'll make one commentary concerning the 'straw mattress' dilemma.

Quite properly, the bottom mattress on such bed should be straw, with the upper mattress of feathers. Or, if one is well off, the bottom mattress is of coiled horsehair. If one attempts to make up the bed solely with layers of feather mattresses, they tend to sink through the ropes and make for a lumpy uncomfortable bed.

This problem can be solved somewhat by using a period bed of a slightly different design--a so called 'sack bottom bed'--one with a drill or canvas bottom to the bed, laced into the pegged sides with rope. Properly tightened, this provides a firm foundation for a feather bed, without the downside of having straw in the house. If you have trouble with allergy, there are a number of modern mattress covers designed to alleviate this problem.

[JacobReichwein]

Thank you so much to all of you! This has been a great help!

Mr. Stich, I have considered the fire hazards, however, is a modern room not, too, a fire hazard?

[KathyBradford]

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w129/preservationparcels/bedcrosssection.jpg

Winterthur Museum has this bed with exposed cross sections of each layer. Terre, is this the sack-bottom foundation of which you spoke?

Layers are top to bottom in the following order.


wool covering that matches the canopy and draperies
down in linen or cotton pillow with pillowcase that matches the sheets
feather in ticking bolster
wool blankets
linen or cotton sheets
wool blanket
feathers in ticking mattress
straw stuffed in ticking mattress

[JacobReichwein]

Kathy, that is absolutely amazing! Thank you so much!

[Spinster]

[QUOTE=KathyBradford;80003] Terre, is this the sack-bottom foundation of which you spoke?

Quite similar. What I can't see from the picture is how the side ropes are secured to the bed.

From my understanding (and I am NO EXPERT HERE) , this sort of foundation was used on those bed rails that have the small short pegs sticking out down the side of the bed rails. The canvas 'sack bottom' made as shown was then lashed to those pegs.

In looking at how Jacob will go about having the mattresses themselves made, these cutaways give some definite illustrations. These are not simply 'sacks of stuff'--they are orderly, firmly packed, mattresses. Locating a good custom mattress maker will take a bit of time and effort, but they are out there. The oddly sized period bed of one's dreams should be found first --and lets hope Jacob has reached the bulk of his full height before investing---for this will need to be made to fit. For an investment of this size though, I'd seriously consider going with a packed cotton mattress for the bottom layer, primarily because of the cost trade off in having this made.

In teaching me how to make such a bed, Mother instructed me to pull off all the sheets and blankets and 'fluff and turn the feathers' each day, making all things smooth. Then, weekly, the straw sacking was fluffed, turned, and smoothed. Finally, as nice warm days came about in the winter, the straw tick could be sunned outside--and anytime there was a question of mustiness or bugs, the straw should be exchanged for fresh, and the old straw used for animal bedding. These sorts of beds were in use in her home until after WWII.

[KarinTimour]

Thank you so much to all of you! This has been a great help!

Mr. Stich, I have considered the fire hazards, however, is a modern room not, too, a fire hazard?

Dear Jacob:

In the midst of all this discussion of your bedding, I'm wondering a few things about "other stuff." First, how will you be lighting your room? Electricity? Kerosene? Candles? Second, will you/do you have electronics that will be in your room as well? Radio? CD player? TV? Does anyone in your family smoke in the house? Will you/do you have a smoke/carbon monoxide detector in your room?

How old is your house? I ask the last because the house I live in was built about 1910, with extensive remodeling in the 1970s, including some wiring. Two apartments were built into the basement at that point. Last week, the built in closet light in one of them shorted out, causing flames to scorch the ceiling and walls of the closet. The electrician said that we were all very lucky that the whole place didn't go up like a tinderbox.

In related news, there was a whole blitz on TV recently about fire hazards in dorm rooms (college students going back to school, etc.). On the Today Show some fire safety experts built two dorm rooms in a controlled warehouse, furnished them with the usual college student stuff. One had a sprinkler system, the other didn't. They deliberately tipped over a candle in each room, which then caught the sheets on the bed on fire. Without sprinkler systems, it took literally 4 minutes for the room without sprinkler systems to be a deathtrap with no way out.

I've survived several fires, two of them at night after I was asleep. I now never go to sleep anywhere without reviewing how to get out of the room in case of another fire. I was responsible for none of them, I don't smoke and I exclusively use electricity for lighting. I'd like to spare anyone else the experience.

Sincerely,
Karin Timour
Period Knitting -- Socks, Sleeping Hats, Balaclavas
Going to Remembrance Day? Come visit me at Chris Daley's store!
Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society
Email: Ktimour@aol.com

[Hank Trent]

In any safety question, there's a risk-reward factor. Of course there's no need to have a period room, so any additional safety risk it creates is an unnecessary one, and therefore it must seem a pointless risk to most people who couldn't care less about having one.

But darn it, to some people, having a period room sounds like fun!

Imagine if every thread on this forum came with a trail of safety posts.

"Was a Springfield or Enfield more common in the western theater?" "Guns are dangerous, keep them locked up, take a training class, are you sure you want to own one?"

"Were tents always cotton or were any still made of linen?" "Don't forget that both linen and cotton are highly flammable, and period tents won't keep you as warm as an enclosed nylon tent so be careful in cold weather..."

Generally, it's assumed the person has decided to buy a gun or camp in a period tent because, for them, the risk is worth the reward, so we move on from there.

The only reason this post is getting what to me seem like odd advisories, I think, is because it's an unusual idea... for this forum. In real life, it's not. Think of all the people with primitive hunting cabins, all the Amish, all the people with hobbies who live in close quarters with weird flammable stuff in their bedrooms, from artists (linseed oil! thinner!) to quilters (all those piles of flammable cotton!) to who-knows-what. They do those things because the risk is well worth the reward, just as we all make choices in life about risk and reward, though they may not be the same as others.

Any of us could be scrutinized and criticized for proposing things that risk our personal safety, that we nonetheless do anyway. It's called living, and it's fun.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[Emmanuel Dabney]

And with my moderator top hat on...

Let us get back to the topic at hand. 19th century practices of stuffing mattresses. Thanks for all the warnings of safety and what people consider to be unsafe or fun but we need to keep our posts tailored to the discussion at hand with period references as close to pre-1866 as possible.

[JacobReichwein]

Thank you Mr. Trent :)

Actually, I don't know about the house situation. I may be moving soon, so I can't be sure yet. Of course the house will will have electricity, I just plan on not having lamps or any other electrical devices in my room. It's still a really rough plan.

[KarinTimour]

Dear Hank:

Wasn't trying to take the fun out of the discussion -- sorry if it appeared that I was. My personal history has caused fire safety to just be something that is higher in my awareness. Doesn't mean I don't use open fires, light with candles, etc. But one of my particular personal quirks tends to be thinking about "what ifs" and building that into my fun. Just as those who have guns build gun safety measures into their fun. I do use a tent when I reenact, but I also take steps to shield my lighting sources so that I"m less likely to catch my tent or clothing on fire -- and my last act before retiring is to put a bucket of water in my tent in case of need. For me, that's part of the fun -- being aware of the period danger, and building the period answer into the experience.

I've got a lot of books, research materials and cotton fabric in my home. My neighborhood has periodic losses of power in the summer time. Among my friends, I'm a standing joke for looking forward to power outages so that I can reenact right at home. When I need to use candles to light, I'm always conscious of "what would happen if I tipped this candle over right now." The second act of any power outage at my house after getting a candle lit is filling a bucket of water. Other people use flashlights and no bucket. Me, I couldn't tell you where the flashlights are, but I can find the candles and buckets in the dark. Just another way to have period fun.

When Jacob said he wanted a period room, I didn't assume that he was going to be lighting with electricity. Electronics and wiring I brought up only because they are a common ignition source of modern fires -- and if Jacob was going to have a TV, CD player and laptop in his period room that should be factored into the mix.

Jacob, if a kerosene or betty lamp overturns, throwing water on the resulting fire will just spread the flames. Period suggestion -- include a fire bucket filled with sand into your room planning. It's a period means of quickly putting out any inadvertent fires. If you're planning to light with candles, then a bucket of water is more than adequate.

Hope that's helpful -- wasn't meant to take the fun out of the discussion.

Sincerely,
Karin Timour
Period Knitting -- Socks, Sleeping Hats, Balaclavas
Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society
Email: Ktimour@aol.com

[Clsinclair]

During the late19 50's and early 60's I would stay with my Great Grandparents. Grandma Doster's father fought in the Civil War. I slept on a ticking mattress stuffed with chicken feathers. I still remember pulling out a feather and tickling my brothers nose. No electricity in the home. Wood stove and wood heater to cook and to stay warm. You never heated the bedrooms. Each bedroom had a slop jar as the bathroom was outside. Everything on the farm was done manually. Plowing was done by a mule. Water was by a manual pump. The cellar kept the canned goods cool under the house. Wash water was caught in barrels with rain runoff from the tin roofs of various buildings. Ever did a headless chicken race? These were the best years of my life.

Claude Sinclair

[Spinster]

Claude makes an excellent point here, even with anecdotal personal evidence a 100 years later.

In a similar mountain home, with the same sorts of beds, electricity arrived sometime after WWII, into a prosperous farming household with substantial acreage, adequate farm machinery, jobs with the county, and college for the children. Still, the bedrooms were unheated and without electric light. The front room had electric light, a coal fireplace, and 2 oil lamps for when the power went out (frequently). The kitchen/dining room had electric light, an oil stove and a wood stove.

Part of what we are losing in the train of thought here is the concept of a 19th century BED ROOM--a room with beds where people sleep.

[Becky Morgan]

Part of what we are losing in the train of thought here is the concept of a 19th century BED ROOM--a room with beds where people sleep.

Yes, that's entirely true. The bedrooms in most older houses weren't meant to be used as entertainment centers or even places for students to do homework. The main room of the house, whatever it might be called in a given area, served as the center up until the 1960s. In my childhood home, the upstairs bedrooms have no separate heat. When the house was built in 1924, someone did put fireplaces in upstairs, but there's no evidence they were ever used; as far as anyone who lived there remembers, the coal stoves in the kitchen and living room heated the upstairs as heat naturally rises and not because of any HVAC system.

The same is true of every old house I know, including the very old one next door lost in the 1990 floor. It was built around 1838, and several boys who grew up there marched off to war in 1861. They slept in the downstairs bedroom with their parents when they were infants. When they got a little older, they moved up to the loft with the older boys in the family. The girls, if we all recall correctly, inhabited the little bedroom which was, in later years, opened up and annexed to the kitchen. In other period houses in our area, the boys slept in the kitchen, since they were going to be up early to tend the stock anyway.

It could be that the effect our poster is after is the boardinghouse room. That would be the more common reason for having a room to himself and keeping more than a few clothes in it. Or he could go for the artist's garret:D This could be a really neat way to live history without giving up everything modern. Local fire codes and the like may intrude somewhat, but by and large the proiject should be viable and is certainly worth a try. I'd look for something other than a straw mattress, however. Having made the acquaintance of one, I wouldn't hurry to be reunited with it.

Oh: Sweet Dreams Mattress Factory in Wheeling, WV has filled unusual orders. Also, the Fort Steuben garrison, Revolutionary though they may be, does use period mattresses in their bunks and could have some suggestions.

[Spinster]

as far as anyone who lived there remembers, the coal stoves in the kitchen and living room heated the upstairs as heat naturally rises and not because of any HVAC system.



I've become so accustomed to a feature in my own post-bellum home, as well as in the 1850's home across the street, that I'd forgotten it: floor registers.

Openings between the first and second stories, in the ceiling/floor, with a metal register with adjustable louvers--heat can be channeled to the second floor, or closed off. So can conversation :D--a feature I most certainly remember from childhood, and all the things I heard the Aunts say AFTER I'd gone to bed.

[Becky Morgan]

Ah, yes, the floor register. The one in the front bedroom makes me smile because I always sneaked into my parents' bedroom on Christmas morning, lay on the floor and peeked through to see if the presents had indeed arrived (the tree was right below the register.)

Generations of children knew the joy of late-night eavesdropping. Fiddling with the register could be an art form, just enough heat, not enough, too much, hmmm, close it off entirely until the stove quits smoking...it's a vanishing piece of Americana, second to the art of firing a wood or coal cookstove. Sometimes knowing the physical shape of a house isn't enough to know how people lived there. Consider that...

...there was almost no expectation of privacy in the house. Married couples often kept their small children in the same room. Ahem. Enough said. They dealt with it. Private conversations came about while people were working, when they could sneak away or when everyone else was distracted.

...the entertainment center was the piano, if there was one. If not, it was the family, singing together, listening to someone read out loud, or playing a parlor game. There was no need for every room to have a musical instrument in it, or a large bookcase; people expected to share time.

...modern people imagine the pre-television folks to have been bored stiff. "Bored" wasn't exactly the case. Modern people are bored because their work is often not physically taxing, their commute is repetitive and they have a lot of free time. In 1860, on the other hand, farmers and factory workers were at work when the sun came up and home after it went down, and they wore out their muscles in between. Getting off the farm for anything could be a novelty. Sunday meant church, and that was all there was to it--unless you were Jewish or Seventh-Day Adventist and celebrated Saturdays. I have a hard time explaining to kids that there was an order to the week that no longer exists, that stores were most often closed on Sundays, that most country or farming people went to town on Saturday afternoons, or that a week of tent meetings in summer, far from being a bore, was a major social as well as religious occasion. There's a difference between being bored with repetition and inactivity, as we understand the term, and being tired, grumpy and worn down with the sameness of hard work. A half-day off could be a real treat and managing to trade enough work time to go visiting for a few days would be memorable.

...people didn't have, nor expect to have, huge closets full of clothes. Most of the really old houses I know have closets added in, or so small they look like the builders' afterthoughts. The clothes press was often a free-standing armoire or the like. Really wealthy women might agonize over this or that dress. The rest of us wore the best, the second-best or the work dress, depending on the rhythm of the week. Laundry was hard work, and it happened once a week unless something got really disgustingly soiled. There are old rhymes about Monday washday and Tuesday ironing. Within our generation, that has vanished, because with automatic washers and dryers, nobody waits, and with so much perma-press hardly anyone irons.
...Somebody cooked in old houses every day. Maybe they used a summer kitchen in hot weather; mostly they fired a wood or coal stove in the kitchen. The bedrooms got cold of an early morning until the first person up broke the bank on the fire and chucked on some fuel.

In short, nothing was as easy, but many things were much simpler. The shape of the house reflects that.

[Rev]

Yep, floor registers-actually passive floor registers, are something with which I'm all too familiar. They are great for spying! And, they are vitally important. When I went to the mission field of Kansas a few years ago the parsonage had no heat upstairs and no floor registers! In Kansas this just didn't make sense. It gets downright chilly up there. One of the first items of business was their installation.

I've done quite a bit of work in Antebellum homes as a restoration carpenter. One of the interesting things I've noticed is that in most homes is that the size of the bed room really doesn't change with the economic level of the building owner. They may get a little more roomy, but nothing like the apartment sized suites of today's houses. Often, even in grand dwellings, the trim, woods, and apointments were much simpler in the bed rooms.