‘The near approach a bed may show / Of human bliss to human woe,” mused the 17th-century French poet Isaac de Benserade. In Western households, the bed has traditionally been where most people are conceived and born, convalesce from illness, make love, and die. Upon evolving from straw pallets to wooden frames—complete with mattresses, sheets, blankets and pillows—they served as a center of daytime sociability. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, beds were often a middle-class family’s most expensive article of furniture, usually among the first items bequeathed to favored heirs.

Source: Wall Street Journal October 24, 2019 22:07 UTC