Painted Beds
In recent years painted furniture, including the painted bed, has become very fashionable. So it is perhaps surprising to think that painted furniture is not a new phenomenon but actually has a remarkably long history. Furniture made during the Dark Ages or Middle Ages was not treated with any of the vast array of stains, waxes, sealants, varnishes, lacquers and so forth that are on the market today. The only treatments likely to have been used would have been a coating of beeswax or tallow, simply to provide some protection from dirt and damp. Paint was rare and would have been made locally in small quantities using whatever animal, vegetable or mineral products were available to create colour.
Painted furniture appears to have originated with the spread through Europe and Britain of the Renaissance during the Jacobean era of the 17th Century. The Renaissance delighted in trying to achieve the highest standards in all fields of human endeavour, so it is easy to imagine how people would have marvelled at this new, painted, furniture. They would have appreciated the achievement involved first in creating paint, then successfully applying it to wood, and ultimately in producing furniture, such as a painted bed for example, that looked so completely different from anything seen previously.
Paint and Puritanism
Across Europe, Protestant religious movements of the disliked and avoided any form of frivolity or lavish lifestyle, so it might be thought that painted furniture would have fallen foul of this outlook, but this was not the case. When Protestants such as the Shakers emigrated to America they took examples of painted furniture with them and also continued to make painted furniture, perhaps even painted beds, after arriving in the New World. Nor was this just plain painted furniture, but was often embellished with images of flowers or wildlife in the same traditions as their European forebears. The trend particularly for Shaker furniture to move away from using a painted finish is attributed to one Henry Lapp, a cabinet maker from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania who copied the unpainted style of his Welsh emigrant neighbours.
The Victorians were very fond of the Medieval period and drew on it extensively in producing the architectural and furniture styles that came to be known as the Gothic Revival. It might be supposed that dark oak would have been the only finish for the furniture of the well-to-do, but the Gothic Revival was a romanticised version of the Medieval period. Designers such as William Burges (1827 – 1881) who famously designed interiors for Castell Coch and Cardiff Castle, were also responsible for highly decorated painted furniture, often in styles of an imagined medieval age.
Painted style splits into contemporary and shabby chic
Since the end of the Second World War, painted furniture has undergone something of a divergence into two distinct categories: contemporary and shabby chic. Contemporary styles of painted beds and painted furniture in general have simple lines and minimal decoration. The furniture is usually painted in light pastel colours of mainly white or off white shades and is great for adding light and brightness to a room. A uniform, even finish also reduces the prominence of the furniture itself and focuses more attention on the soft furnishings and room accessories – making a painted bed perfect for lavish fabrics.
Shabby chic painted furniture, also sometimes called (not always entirely accurately) French painted furniture, has a completely different purpose. Its origins lie, somewhat bizarrely, in changes to the taxation laws of the country. In the 1950s and 1960s capital taxation of landowners and the owners of grand properties was greatly increased and this, together with shortages of cheap skilled labour, meant that many of the larger, more affluent homes could no longer be maintained to the required standards.
As a result it gradually became acceptable and then positively fashionable, to have interiors furnished with elegant pieces not just patinated with age but having a distinctly worn appearance. This was the birth of shabby chic. As shabby chic became more fashionable most of the suitable, distressed painted furniture was sourced from France where painted Rococo styles had remained popular amongst the rural population long after its passing elsewhere. Genuine faded antiques, including painted beds, could not supply the growing demand, so an industry grew up around producing new furniture with many of the style attributes of the faded elegant, ‘shabby chic’ furniture.