The beautiful young actress had just come off of an amazingly popular weekly TV soap opera featuring the sordid lives of the very rich and powerful. And there she was, her long hair recently cut short and tinier than I could ever have imagined, posing for a magazine advertisement for my best selling “Knot Bed” – a design statement many might consider somewhat “over the top” but nevertheless certainly glamorous. And we all know how Hollywood loves glamour – or used to.

This wasn’t the first celebrity drawn to my latest version of a sleigh bed - but surely the prettiest and smallest in stature. There had been a multi-million CD selling rock star, a famous R&B singer, an African princess and the biggest of them all (at least in height and weight) the Crown Prince of a Pacific Kingdom for which I had to scale this already very large bed even bigger and higher with extra bracing on the frame.

To this day I sometimes ponder the everlasting allure of the sleigh bed and why its popularity has only increased with the passage of time. It seems that since its inception over 200 years ago in France it has been a design favored by nobility, courtesans, the everyman and celebrities that we have come to think are bigger than life itself. I would venture to say that of all bed designs that have come down to us through the years (and I have designed quite a few myself) no bed has withstood the test of time (with very little tweaking) through the centuries as has the sleigh bed.

For those of you who have been tied to the four-poster or the platform bed all your life and are still unsure of just what a sleigh bed is here is a quick primer about this elegant design. When it first appeared in France around 1800 it was from the start quite weighty and imposing probably due to the fact that it was inspired by the court of Emperor Napoleon and more particularly by the courtesans of the day who were initially influenced by the many antique Roman forms and artifacts that were being unearthed throughout Europe at that time. And it was these discoveries that formed the impetus for the style of furniture that we call “Empire.”

The French Empire bed crossed the Atlantic in the first part of the 19th Century with a basic form that we know today as the sleigh bed. It differed primarily from the French version in its size as they favored a bed that was rather small and designed for one and which we have come to know as a “daybed.” But still the intrinsic look was the same: a high scrolled headboard (today usually anywhere from 42” – 52” high) and a similarly scrolled slightly lower footboard. The early versions usually featured mahogany veneers and the headboard and footboard always curved upward with a roll at the top that either rolled inward or outward. It was these rolls and curves that made the bed look like a horse-drawn sleigh and gave it a name that applies even today – though we have come a long way from only using wood veneers.

In its present form a number of different materials are being utilized in all sorts of creative ways for the sleigh bed. The marketplace offers beds of iron, steel, aluminum and leather either on their own or combined with wood. Though of course these materials will never give the warmth and elegance I believe that a fully upholstered bed done up in a luxurious fabric can offer.

Where space has been an issue for a client I have designed sleigh beds without a footboard or with rolls either less exaggerated or with no curves at all and have even used an inset marble trim to replace the fabric covered “knot” detail – all with great success. But of the many sleigh beds I have made for clients over the years there is one that still stands out in my mind. It was covered with a sumptuous blue velvet fabric complete with trim and moss fringe on the pillows that could have been made for the Czar of Russia so grand and impressive was the finished product.

And maybe that’s a key to understanding the timeless hold that the sleigh bed has on our psyche. It must be its inherent nobility passed down from a king’s royal court and rooted in historic Rome. Few beds that I know of can give the air of sophistication, elegance and sensual allure that the sleigh bed can. My version has appealed to the drama and glamour that many of us seek to include in our life, proof that we still want to feel like the king (or queen) of our castle.