Rare Victorian Forum

In my experience, brass beds in true Aesthetic style are fairly rare. The "Brass Menagerie" catalogue, the emerging Bible of Aesthetic metalware, mentions beds only in passing; others have commented on this, too, that Aesthetic brass beds are uncommon on the market, and in the literature. This one on eBay right now (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190389090121&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT) is one of the few I've ever seen. Anybody else have pictures to share?  

Yes, I wish I had that kind of money, too! I positively drooled when I saw this frame, and went so far as to determine from the seller that it had the original rails, and that they were long enough to accommodate a modern queen mattress. Unfortunate for the seller that he doesn't identify the bed as aesthetic in design, since that might grab a few more potential bidders. I'm not usually "brass bed conscious," but I had been watching them on eBay for a while. We recently upgraded from a queen to a king mattress, and I had been searching -- not with much hope -- for an antique frame to fit it. What I finally found was this pair of twin/single brass bed frames: not aesthetic, unfortunately, but sturdy and attractive; and pushed together, just the right dimensions to fit a king-size mattress on top of 2 twin box springs. This is has always seemed an attractive solution to me, real king size antique brass beds being so rare; and I don't like the idea of artificially "extending" original head- and foot-boards to king size. This keeps the original object(s) more or less intact (the rails had been extended by a former owner to the necessary 80 in. long) while accommodating the monstrous (but oh so comfy) modern king size mattress. Fortunately this pair was CHEAP -- priced at about we had been prepared to pay for an LLBean reproduction iron bedstead; and it was local, so we also saved on shipping.     

I'm sure you're absolutely correct about the fate of most Aesthetic brass beds. I've always thought that Aesthetic metalware was more likely to perish in a scrap drive than any other style, because it was so distinctive, and was popular for so short a time, that it must therefore have looked horribly eccentric and old-fashioned very, very quickly. And this must have been particularly true of beds: brass beds were popular for decades, and the vast majority were standard variants of the plain brass-rod-and-knob design. The very few Aesthetic beds must have stood out like the proverbial pink monkey -- just begging to be thrown away.