Although antique faux’ finishes are still the most popular we do, “Industrial” finishes, along with more modern styles have been gaining in popularity more than any other style or design. Industrial finishes include any finish that have a new “unused” look. They can be “powder coatings”, which is a type of coating that is applied as…
Regarding your home, color has long been used to create feelings of comfort, peace or space. Not only on interior walls, but also on furniture. Throughout history predominant colors have given us insight into a societies mores and beliefs. The Victorian Era was dominated by oppressive dark colors. Primary colors were unheard of. Iron beds were…
So you’re hunting for a bed….. not a “replica” or “reproduction”, and you want to know where to start. You should first know that there is no comparability between an authentic old antique iron bed and a reproduction. They are constructed very differently, the reproduction being produced with aluminum castings and thin wall tubing and the original…
Sometimes referred to as the Arts and Crafts movement or the American Craftsman style, this period in design history became popular toward the end of the 1800’s and continued until the 1930’s. It is probably one of the more “revived” schools of design and to this day experiences a larger share of popularity, than all…
If you bought your antique iron bed earlier than 1977, you can count on on it having been painted with lead based paint. Back in the 1800 s, when these beauties were being made, lead based paint was being used on all furniture and pretty much all iron beds of that period. Lead was added to paint to help the speed…
Pittsburgh was the focus of steel production in this country back in the 1800’s. So if you owned a enterprise that depended on steel and iron ore, like antique iron beds, for the production of what you created, it behooved you to locate that enterprise as close to the supply of those needed materials as possible.…
Antique iron beds have grown to be one of the most preferred furniture items being used today with “Green” interior designers. As we all know, there are no better sustainable eco-friendly items than antique furniture. Their “atomic footprint” has previously been determined and subtracted from the environment. It’s affect, whatever it may have been, has…
If you were to come across any vintage photo’s of bedroom interiors, you would probably be amazed at how spartan they are. The factor that would probably catch your attention before anything else is the lack of pillows that were used and the method in which they were exhibited. Most of the time there was a solitary pair of pillows…
Leisure and comfort are two of the more integral things to remember when deciding on a Cottage decor. Other schools of design base their foundation on formality and pretense. Quaint and cozy can be your catch phrase for Cottage Style. Another tenant to remember is “practical”, yet comfortable. When it comes to color schemes,…
“The Hills are Drying Up”, has become the catch phrase for every antique picker that is still in the business. When I started as a wholesale “picker”, over 40 years ago back in Washington DC., the “hills” were packed with merchandise. The “hills” are the backwoods, that are away from cities and densely populated metropolitan areas.…