The search for a vintage Jenny Lind bed frame (and the new one we ended up with)

THE POPLAR COTTAGE

Here’s what I know to be true: it’s all but impossible to find a vintage Jenny Lind bed frame in a queen size. Full size, sure. But as much as I love my husband, a full size bed is just not in the cards for us ;) As for the queen, nada. After months and months of searching, I admitted defeat (we do have to move into the Poplar Cottage someday, after all!) and bought the loveliest new version I could find. And she really is a beauty, let me show you…

bed | wallpaper | curtains (in flax) | windows

psst: you can see the last Jenny Lind bed I bought here. It was a vintage beauty but I never found a spot for it and ended up selling it :(

If you’re wondering what and who exactly is Jenny Lind, let me back up and explain.

What is a Jenny Lind Bed?

Jenny Lind beds are indeed named after a real woman, a Swedish opera singer from the 1800s of the same name (more on her in a minute). They’re essentially any beds made with round, spool-shaped spindles, rails, and posts. These beds are also called spindle beds, spool beds, and bobbin beds and they’re a beautiful mix of solid wood, delicate curves, and craftsmanship.

As for the craftsmanship, originally the spindles were turned using a lathe operated by a foot pedal. Can you imagine how much work went into making just one bed? Eventually steam power replaced the foot pedal in the first half of the 1800s, making spool beds much easier to "mass" produce. They grew in popularity as they became readily available and due to their lightness, since settlers could more easily transport spindle beds than than their heavier solid wood counterparts.

So Who exactly is Jenny Lind?

Jenny Lind, our name-insuring opera singer, came to America in 1850 on a much-publicized concert tour with P.T. Barnum. She was an "it girl" long before the likes of Taylor Swift, and she caused quite a sensation in America. During her tour, Lind purportedly preferred sleeping on spool beds, and the notion stuck. Her preference morphed into a nickname for the beds and it stuck. Or perhaps the name stuck because Barnum marketed a spool bed with her name attached, helping to cement her fame and publicize the tour. Either way, the spool bed has been referred to as the Jenny Lind bed for centuries - a beautiful legacy for a notable singer of a bygone era.

doorknob

So back to our hunt for a vintage Jenny Lind bed. When my search turned up nothing but full size beds and frustration, I briefly considered a different style vintage bed. There are so many pretty vintage wood beds to be found on FBMP/Craigslist/antique-stores (like this one and this one and this one and these) but I just couldn’t get past my original vision of a Jenny Lind. Our room has windows behind the bed wall and we needed something short and ideally something not solid, so you can see the beautiful wallpaper behind it. And Jenny Lind felt like the right solution.

Fast forward to last December and I was doing a little holiday shopping at a mall and saw this bed in-store and my jaw dropped. The details and craftsmanship, oh my! It’s sturdy, like good-quality heavy wood kind of sturdy. And the maple is that perfect blonde color with a matte finish that doesn’t have a hint of 90’s shiny maple. It was perfect for our little bedroom. I ordered it that day and picked it up at a warehouse a few weeks later (to avoid paying shipping ;) and let me just say, I am a happy customer!