The Loom Bed - About the design
The Loom Bed
Some projects arrive with a brief that makes every decision easier, and this was one of them. My wife was pregnant with our first child and we needed a bed that would be ready for nursing - somewhere warm and comfortable to spend the early hours of the morning, with a backrest that would actually support her at the right angle for long stretches sitting up. That single, specific requirement ended up shaping almost everything about the piece, from the materials and proportions through to the joinery and the choice to weave the headboard panel by hand.
The frame is solid English ash, sourced from Wiltshire - timber grown on the Longleat or Badminton estates. Ash has a reputation for being a utilitarian hardwood rather than a showpiece one, but the boards had a particularly expressive colouring - streaks of olive and brown running through the pale grain - that gave the timber a quiet character suited to the brief. The design keeps it front and centre with clean lines, softened edges and no applied decoration to distract from the material itself.
Beds present a particular joinery problem in that a fully assembled solid hardwood frame simply won't fit through a standard door, so the structure needs to be designed to come apart and go back together in the room. Most knockdown beds solve this with bolts or Allen keys, but I set myself an additional constraint and engineered the frame to disassemble and reassemble entirely by hand, with no tools and no fixings of any kind. Getting the tolerances right took time - the joints need to be precise enough to hold a solid, stable structure through years of use, but loose enough to take apart without force, which is a harder balance to strike than it sounds.
The headboard panel is hand-woven in rattan, and weaving isn't a skill I came into this project with much confidence in. The brief called for something that would give genuine back support at the right angle for sitting up, and a rigid panel - timber or upholstered - wouldn't have the flex or warmth that a woven surface can offer. I used the project as an opportunity to develop the skill properly rather than approximate it, and the result is a panel that's consistent and tight, with a texture that's tactile in a way that the rest of the piece isn't.
The Loom Bed was made in anticipation of a new arrival, and it's designed to last well beyond those early months - the ash will age well, the rattan softens with use, and the whole thing comes apart and goes back together without a screwdriver whenever it needs to move.
Sam | Whyman Furniture
