CHAPTER III
BEDSTEADS
ONE of the most valuable pieces of furniture in the household of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the bedstead with its belongings. Bedsteads and beds occupy a large space in inventories, and their valuation was often far more than that of any other article in the inventory, sometimes more than all the others. In spite of the great value placed upon them, none have survived to show us exactly what was meant by the “oak Marlbrough bedstead” or the “half-headed bedstead” in early inventories. About the bedstead up to 1750 we know only what these inventories tell us, but the inference is that bedsteads similar to those in England at that time were also in use in the colonies. The greater portion of the value of the bedstead lay in its furnishings,—the hangings, feather bed, bolster, quilts, blankets, and coverlid,—the bedstead proper, when inventoried separately, being placed at so low a sum that one concludes it must have been extremely plain.
Illus. 51.—Wicker Cradle, 1620.
Several cradles made in the seventeenth century are still in existence. Illustration [51] shows one which is in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth, and which is said to have sheltered Peregrine White, the first child born in this country to the Pilgrims. It is of wicker and of Oriental manufacture, having been brought from Holland upon the Mayflower, with the Pilgrims.
