{"id":402547,"date":"2019-04-03T11:45:34","date_gmt":"2019-04-03T10:45:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-medieval-box-bed-returns\/"},"modified":"2019-04-03T11:45:34","modified_gmt":"2019-04-03T10:45:34","slug":"the-medieval-box-bed-returns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-medieval-box-bed-returns\/","title":{"rendered":"The Medieval Box Bed Returns"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

The box bed, sometimes known by its French name of\u00a0lit clos,\u00a0is a bed built into a piece of furniture. It looks curious to us today and it\u2019s somewhat of a novelty to climb into bed and shut the doors behind you, but 600 years ago this kind of bed was very popular, and it is making a comeback today.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery Conveniently Designed\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

As its name implies, the box bed is\u00a0a bed\u00a0<\/a>which is completely contained within a wooden box. There were a lot of variations in design \u2013 some had curtains for privacy, while others were completely closed off with sliding wooden doors. They could be built in a number of ways to utilize the space available \u2013 some were freestanding and could be moved, but others were built into recesses of a room.<\/p>\n

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\u2018A Mother Delousing her Child\u2019s Hair, known as \u2018A Mother\u2019s Duty\u2019\u2019 (1658-1660) by Pieter de Hooch. (\u00a0<\/em>Public Domain\u00a0<\/em><\/a>) This image shows a box bed with curtains built into a recess of the room.<\/em><\/p>\n

The most well-known description of a box bed is in Emily Bronte\u2019s 1847 novel\u00a0Wuthering Heights\u00a0<\/em>. By the time of the novel, the box bed was a thing of the past, but even then Bronte noted how \u201cvery conveniently designed\u201d box beds were, admiring them for the practicality of giving each member of the family their own privacy with no need for individual rooms, and for the fact they made the narrator feel very secure when he was in the bed with closed panels.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Box beds could give everyone a feeling of their own space in a shared space. (WhoKnowsEast\/\u00a0Michelduchaine<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

Medieval Origins<\/strong><\/p>\n

While they were already obsolete by the time of Bronte\u2019s novel, the box bed had a long history of use. Its roots come from Medieval\u00a0Brittany<\/a>. By the 16th Century, examples of box beds could be found across Europe,…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The box bed, sometimes known by its French name of\u00a0lit clos,\u00a0is a bed built into a piece of furniture. It looks curious to us today and it\u2019s somewhat of a novelty to climb into bed and shut the doors behind you, but 600 years ago this kind of bed was very popular, and it is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-402547","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}