4ft6 Antique Victorian All Brass Bedstead – Ref. BA 9544A54

Stunning early Victorian brass bedstead in the Gothic Revival style. Rare and highly desirable cartwheel design based around beautifully symmetrical large outer and smaller central, double tube demi-cartwheels. These in turn trap cast-brass Celtic crosses between them. Highly puritan and leaning towards ecclesiastical design cues, this bedstead’s cast brass mounts would have been created by the best pattern makers and brass founders of the day. Almost medieval in presence, this wonderful, high Victorian bedstead also has intricately ormolu finished facets to its cast brass mounts.

This bedstead is quite easily worthy of Bed Bazaar’s ‘museum quality’ stamp, standing as it does in the most superb original condition. This adds greatly to its elegance and overtly ornate scheme. The brass has been so well preserved firstly courtesy of the Victorian’s Lumanoid lacquered process, one that utilised a sepia coloured lacquer, but more relevantly courtesy of having spent life in service in the bedroom of a well-kept, very dry period property. One would imagine its bedroom had net curtains or blinds drawn most of the time, or possibly it was in a room where it stood well away from direct window light.

This dark lacquer effect helped unify the different colours of brass mounts to one uniform tone. The brass mounts would have varied in colour due to the differing processes used to make them. Some were spun from discs, on this bedstead all were casts from molten brass, and by contrast, the round tubes were a wrapping of sheet brass which was rolled over steel tubes. As such, and due to the differing metallurgy of the brasses used to create them, once polished they varied in the tone of their brass colour, thus the sepia lacquer masked this. It also made allowance for the fact that slower Victorian polishing wheel speeds could not achieve such a high shine as the electrically powered ones we use today. Again, this lower shine was improved by the darker coloured, but still clear, Lumanoid lacquer. Quick ship programme