Bed hangings
Bed hangings or bed curtains are fabric panels that surround a bed; they were used from medieval times through to the 19th century. Bed hangings provided privacy when the master or great bed was in a public room, such as the parlor, but also kept in warmth and showed evidence of wealth when beds were located in private areas of the home. When bedrooms became more common in the mid-1700s, the use of bed hangings diminished.
Bed hangings were made of various fabrics, depending on the place, time period, and wealth of the owner. Fabrics included wool, cotton, linen, fustian, and, for those who could afford it, silk or velvet. Stitches were worked in wool or, for the rich or the nobility, silk and gold. Decorations on bed hangings also varied based on geography and time period. French hangings during the Renaissance might depict embroidered scenes from the Bible, mythology, or allegory. Hangings from the UK used floral, leaf, chinoiserie, and animal themes at various times, and those from the American Colonies often followed suit, though with less dense stitching to preserve scarce crewel wool. Examples of bed hangings can be found in museums and historic homes.
Purpose
Bed hangings, also known as bed "furniture," were used from medieval times through the 19th century, though their popularity waned from the mid 1700s. Bed hangings proved useful for several reasons. The master bed was often located in the parlor, and the hangings provided privacy. Other beds may have occupied the hall and kitchen, as well as the upstairs bedrooms.Given the public locations of some beds, the decorated hangings also served as a show of wealth and helped to keep warmth in. Bed hangings in the second half of the 1600s through the first half of the 1700s were often embroidered with Jacobean motifs. Some hangings were embroidered with blue and green crewel wool on cream cotton and linen. Although many examples of crewel work survive, such curtains are rarely specified in inventories, and wealthier owners paid for embroidery in coloured silks and gold and silver thread. By the mid-18th century, separate rooms for sleeping were becoming more common. The spaces where beds were located were no longer areas where courtiers gathered, with the attendant need to impress. The need for bed hangings diminished.
Categories of bed hangings
Some medieval bed canopies and curtains were suspended from ceiling beams. In English these canopies were known as a "hung celour". The fabric canopy concealed an iron frame with iron curtain rods.These beds can be seen in manuscript illuminations, paintings, and engravings, showing cords suspending the front of the canopy to the ceiling. Such beds could easily be dismantled and the rich fabric hangings carefully packed away. Scottish inventories of the 16th and 17th-century mention "chapel beds". These had elaborate fabric canopies, apparently suspended from the ceiling of the bedchamber. Mary, Queen of Scots had a number of her chapel beds converted into "foure nuikit" four cornered standing beds in 1565, recycling rich fabrics from other beds and velvet covers were made for the new posts.A complete set of bed furniture for a standing bed may include a coverlet, "a headcloth, three or four valences, side curtains, a tester cloth, and bases, attached to the bed rail."
- Headcloth : this would hang above the head of the bed and extended just below the head board. It would normally be as wide as the bed. If there was extra width, it may have been designed to be wrapped around the bed posts.
- Valences: these short pieces of fabric would extend around the top of the bed, outside of the other hangings, and would lie perfectly flat. They were the "crowning element in a set of bed hangings." They were usually in three pieces, one for each side and one for the bottom of the bed, but by the late 1700s a valence might be one long piece.
- Side curtains: these would hang on both sides of the bed, and be used to cover the upper half of the bed.
- Tester cloth: the canopy or celure for the bed
- Foot curtains: these would be wider than the side curtains. They would be pulled both toward the center sides of the bed, to meet the side curtains, and towards the foot of the bed, to meet in the center across from the headcloth.
- Bases: These would often be stiff, and used to cover the lower bed frame.
- Cantonniéres or Bonnegrâces: A 17th-century elaboration was to place narrow fixed curtains at the corners or foot posts.
- Case curtains: some elaborate 18th-century beds were given permanent protective case-curtains which ran on an iron rod in front of the bed proper to keep the dust off the precious fabrics. The French designer Daniel Marot called the cover curtains un tour de lit.
Materials
English bed curtains were often made of wool, though in the mid 1600s linen and cotton fabrics started to be used, particularly fustian, a heavy twill-woven cloth with a linen warp and a cotton weft. Baptist Hicks sold watchet velvet for a valence and watchet taffeta sarcenet for curtains to the Earl of Northumberland in 1586, from his London shop at the sign of the White Bear. Matching watchet fringes were supplied by a silkman, Mr Bate. Bess of Hardwick owned an opulent "Pearl bed" featuring the Cavendish heraldry, which she bequeathed to her daughter, the Countess of Shrewsbury. The valences were of black velvet embroidered with pearls and silver "sivines and woodbines". The counterpane of black velvet was striped with silver and coiled silver purl.In the late 1600s those who could afford it might use silk and velvet fabrics. Some wealthy householders had sets of summer and winter curtains. A woollen fabric called perpetuana was popular in the 17th century. The warm woollen curtains could be as sumptuously decorated with embroidery and passementerie as the suites of silk curtains used in summer.
Colonial American bed hangings were often made of home-grown linen or from local wool. These would be spun, dyed and woven, though finer fabrics were available for purchase.
Passementerie, lace, and fringes
Bed hanging fabrics were decorated and edged with fringes and borders of lace and passementerie. These were carefully described in the inventories of aristocrats and the wealthy. "Passamayne", a variety of bobbin woven lace was made of silver and gold Venice thread to trim the beds of Henry VIII and James V of Scotland. Bess of Hardwick had a canopy bed with six curtains, "striped" with gold and silver, and "layde with gold lace about the edges, and a gold twist downe the seams and fringed about with golde fringe". The curtains of a bed owned by Anne of Denmark in the first decade of the 17th century were made of fabric in panes of alternating colour, the seams covered with lace of green silk with gold and silver thread. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1643, Elizabeth Glover owned 11 beds, one with curtains of "Cheney" glazed worsted wool with "a deep silke silk fring on the vallance, & a smaller on the curtaines", and the counterpane was embellished with strips of green lace.Aristocrats like Elizabeth Preston, Countess of Desmond of Kilkenny Castle, bought stocks of gold and silver thread for passementerie, which may have been made up to their specification by specialist weavers. After 1660, the words "galloon" or "loom lace" for woven lace applied to bed curtains replaced the older term "passamayne". Curtains were also decorated with tapes and ribbons.
Needlework decorations
Continental bed hangings
Embroidery was used to decorate bed hangings, with some of the finest embroidery produced in Caen, in France. Elaborately decorated bed hangings were known in medieval and renaissance France as courtepointerie, a term now associated with quilts. These sumptuous bed hangings were purchased by the nobility and royalty. In 1662, during the reign of Louis XIV, the royal Gobelins workshops were established. Although better known for their tapestries, there and at Versailles, professional embroiderers worked on royal commissions of bed hangings based on the designs of painters. During the Renaissance in France, bed valences were embroidered with scenes from the Bible, mythology, and allegory. Many bed hangings were made from velvet or satin and had applique interlacing and scroll designs. These motifs full of movement, as well as others that were delicate and refined in the 16th century were followed in the next by a more monumental style produced by professionals. Those of the highest quality were made by professionals. Bed hangings were highly valued possessions, and records from the Middle Ages through the 1700s indicate that they were their owners' most prized possessions.In Italy, embroidered bed hangings had been made in Palermo since the 12th century. Professional workers embroidered padded gold threads on velvet or satin, used braid-outlined appliqué, sometimes with silk embroidery for use as furnishings such as valences. In the second half of the 17th century, lighter domestic embroidered work became more colorful, freer, and naturalistic.
In 1512, Bona Sforza of Aragon married King Zygmunt I of Poland. As part of her trousseau, she brought a four poster marriage bed with 23 hangings attached to the canopy. One of the most expensive "was made of silver material with a gold border, woven with the stylized inflorescence of artichokes."