Beds in the 1800s were made of corn husk, straw, feathers and other lumpy material that could be found and used and then stuffed into a bag.
A prosperous American of the 18th and early 19th centuries slept on a bed made up of several layers.
At the bottom was a simple, firm “mattress” pad or cushion filled with corn husks or horsehair.
Next came a big featherbed for comfort, plus feather-filled bolsters and pillows.
Old bed frames were made of wood and the mattresses were typically made of straw, hay or feathers.
Beds in the 1500s were most often made from straw, hay, feathers and pea shucks.
In the early days and in the 1400s the Mattresses were most often made out of pea shucks, straw or sometimes feathers, stuffed into coarse ticks, and covered with velvets, brocades or silks.
1500-1700 Mattresses were stuffed with straw or down feathers and placed on top of a bed consisting of a timber frame with the support of rope or leather.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, a typical bed was constructed with a wooden frame, with supports made of rope or leather.
The mattresses were typically filled with straw or down, held together by cheap fabric.
The ropes needed to be tightened on a regular basis due to the sagging of the mattress.
The best beds had a canvas mattress or two filled with wool or straw and then the feather bed.
The under-mattress(es) might be laid on canvas spread over the bed slats, or possibly on woven rushes.
Before the days of Tempur-Pedic and Casper, humans slept on makeshift sleeping surfaces like piles of straw.
As society advanced, primitive mattresses were fashioned out of stuffed fabrics, and down was introduced.
Bedframes came much later but have still been around since the ancient Egyptians era.
Long before steel-coil innersprings and high-tech memory foam or any mattress at all, for that matter early humans slept on layers of reeds, rushes, and leaves, where they bedded down along with their extended families.
Then came piles of straw, woven mats, and cloth sacks filled with hay.