Half Tester Canopy Beds – The elegant yet practical bedroom furniture piece

27 March 2018

An introduction to Tester Canopy Beds

To understand what half tester canopy beds are we first need to know what a tester bed is. These antique luxury beds are much like a four poster bed, but have a supported canopy above and would typically either be made of cloth or carved wood. They were designed in the late 1700s-early 1800s and looked luxurious. They did also have a more practical use in the ages where modern central heating wasn’t around.

Here is an illustrated example of a full size tester canopy bed that uses cloth to cover the canopy area.

What is a Half Tester Canopy Bed?

The half tester canopy bed is where instead of the above canopy covering the entire length and width of the bed frame, the length is halved stopping around where your waist would be. Making the space to be heated much smaller therefore making it quicker to heat the occupants.

This is one of our own Antique Reproduction Half Tester Canopy Beds, made from mahogany. You can clearly see how the canopy size differs to the example above. You can see more photos of this bed by clicking this image to head to the website.

What makes tester and half tester canopy beds so practical?

We know that tester and half tester beds were owned for their elegance but what other uses did these bespoke beds have?

Warmth

Due to being able to drape fabric from the canopies, tester beds are great for retaining heat. Of course back in the 17-1800s central heating didn’t exist and most homes relied heavily on fireplaces, so you can imagine that during the night most homes got bitterly cold.

To help combat this, like mentioned above the cloth hung from the canopy would surround the whole bed frame, creating a space where body heat would be kept within the confines of the bed itself. With half tester beds these stop around mid-way down the bed frame, this would result in a much warmer area around the top half of the bed occupants body.

Copper bed warmers were also used as an additional source of heat, the embers from the fireplace would be placed into this and then slotted in between the mattress and the springs, this coupled with the surrounding fabric this would create an even warmer space within the bed for the occupants.

Copper bed warmers were often used by putting warm fire embers inside and sliding it in between the mattress and springs of a bed.

Rain and Rodent protection

Many homes back then in England had sod or thatched roofs, these materials were far from being 100% water tight and also it was a favoured place for rodents to rest in as it would be a warmer place for them to sleep. Of course bed occupants would be far from happy with having water dripping on them or rodents falling onto them as they slept, so the canopy on tester beds provided protection against this.

To see the rest of our half tester canopy beds please click here.