Vintage ads explore familiar themes
By David Perry -- Furniture Today, March 26, 2006
Newark, N.J. — The themes are familiar ones: The importance of getting seven or eight hours of sound sleep each night. The value of sleeping on a mattress that is cleaner than the competition. Beds that come with a 30-night trial period. Beds that help relieve muscle tension. The joys of sleeping on an air mattress.
Those are marketing messages that still resonate in the marketplace today, but they are also themes that jump out from a collection of vintage bedding ads assembled by bedding history buff Samuel Chase. A look through his ad archives is a journey down memory lane that, in many cases, ends up right back in the present.
Think those 30-day comfort trials that are common today were a recent invention? Think again.
Here's an ad for Ostermoor bedding, which ran in The Cosmopolitan in 1902: "Sleep on it thirty nights and if it is not even all you have hoped for, if you don't believe it to be the equal in cleanliness, durability and comfort of any $50 hair mattress ever made, you can get your money back by return mail."
OK, the reference to a "hair mattress" does date that ad to the days of horsehair mattresses. Ostermoor, which figures prominently in Chase's bedding ad archives, took on the horsehair mattresses with its Patent Elastic Felt Mattress, which cost all of $15 in 1902.
That mattress consisted of "airy, interlacing, fibrous sheets of snowy whiteness and great elasticity; closed in the tick by hand — constructed, not stuffed. Softer than hair — never mats or packs as hair does — and never needs remaking and is absolutely vermin-proof."
In those days, Ostermoor advertised a direct-to-the-consumer model that is still used by some bedding producers today. "Remember," the producer said in a 1902 ad, "Ostermoor Mattresses are not for sale by stores. Must be bought direct of us."
Ostermoor took direct aim at horsehair mattresses in its advertising. A 1904 ad features this headline: "It is accident or disease only that puts horse hair on the market. Not a pleasant thought to dream upon. Did you sleep on a hair mattress last night?"
That ad says Ostermoor's Patent Elastic Felt "is purity itself, germ-free and vermin-proof."
The care of that mattress was unusual: "An occasional sun-bath is all they require." But in other respects, the bed was just like a number of specialty beds on the market today: "The tick can be taken off and washed whenever soiled."
The newlywed market, a staple of bedding makers to this day, was also addressed by bedding marketers of yesteryear.
An ad for Englander, "America's most luxurious mattress," pictures a young woman sitting up in bed and holding a book with the title, "What every bride should know." The copy makes a startling claim: "Better rest makes better husbands."
The ad notes that "sleep authorities" say that "sound rest is the key to personality ... a clue to glowing health."
Many of the ads in Chase's portfolio, like that Englander ad, are undated, forcing Chase to make educated guesses about their age.
Bedding's biggest names are included in Chase's vintage ad collection. Here's a look at some of the old ads by today's big-name producers:
Sealy
Sealy was "building an army" in an ad for the Sealy Sanitary Tuftless Mattress, which ran in The Literary Digest for Nov. 10, 1917, when America was going to war. The army was an army of "trim, fit, strong men and women — who arise each morning refreshed and energized. They greet each day full of vigor and confident in spirit — with mental and physical forces ready for every emergency."
The secret to that vigor? "The Sealy Sanitary Tuftless Mattress brings quick sleep and perfect rest. It banishes the sleepless nights that sap the strength of the nervous and overworked constitution." The beds were filled "with a single deep, springy batt of pure, new, long-fibre cotton — with the fibres first blown apart and then interwoven into an inseparable cushion by the patented Sealy air-woven process."
The beds were offered "on sixty night's approval."
In an ad in Time's Oct. 2, 1950, issue, the forerunner to the Sealy Posturepedic, the Sealy Firm-O-Rest Orthopedic Mattress, was featured. It was positioned as providing the "posturized" firmness and "supple support" required of healthful sleep. The bed was engineered for "proper sleep posture, as so many doctors advise."
The genesis of the Posturepedic name, launched a few years later, is right in that ad copy: "Posture" and "pedic."
Simmons
Eleanor Roosevelt, or Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt in the conventions of the day, promoted Simmons Beautyrest mattresses in a December 1927 Ladies' Home Journal ad. "In my opinion," Mrs. Roosevelt says, "the perfect gift is one that fills a real need — luxuriously." The ad says she has Beautyrest Model No. 1595 mattresses in her bedroom in her New York house. She calls that bed "the most marvelous mattress in the world."
That ad offers the suggestion that a Simmons Beautyrest mattress "can be presented as a Christmas gift with the most confident satisfaction." Gift certificates are available at local retailers, the ad says. A cutaway of the mattress reveals "firm, sensitive coils extending to the farthermost edges," a feature that explains the bed's "luxurious buoyancy — its trim upstanding sides!"
In that ad Simmons uses the tag line, "Built for sleep."
That line reappears in another Simmons ad, this one asserting that "loss of sleep cost Napoleon his empire." The ad continues: "History tells us that Napoleon, exhausted from wakefulness, gave contradictory orders on the afternoon of his Waterloo."
That ad goes on to talk about the importance of a good night's sleep, a message Simmons continues to tout today: "You, too, may be and doubtless are, imperiling your success by lack of sleep — in quality if not in hours. And sooner or later you will realize that the kind of sleep you get is more important than the time you spend in bed."
In a 1971 Simmons ad, which notes that Beautyrest models start at $89.95, the producer features a picture of Goldilocks and three stuffed bears. "Because every Goldilocks has a different idea of what's too soft, what's too hard, and what's just right," the ad says, "Beautyrest now comes in 4 firmnesses." They were Normal Firm, Extra Firm, Extra Firm Plus and Super Firm. The ad also makes a pitch for larger sizes, noting that a queen provides 20% more sleeping space than "an old-fashioned double bed."
Chase said the Goldilocks pictured in that ad is in "very suggestive" attire.
Serta
Serta's flagship Perfect Sleeper model, a tuftless mattress and box spring "still $49.50 each," was featured in a full-page ad in The Saturday Evening Post in 1948: "Only this smooth Serta mattress guarantees your perfect sleeping comfort. You sleep on it ... not in it," the headline says. The tuftless construction has "nary a button, bump or hollow to disturb your deep restful sleep. Non-shift anchored upholstery. Non-sag reinforced edges."
That ad reveals that Serta Associates had a devilish address in those days: 666 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago. The producer has moved a number of times since, and is now headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Ill.
In a Serta ad from the following year, the producer uses laboratory photos to show that a bowling ball dropped on a Serta Perfect Sleeper innerspring mattress "bounces high," thereby proving "the extra springy resiliency of this mattress." In the next picture, the test is repeated on "a common type of soft mattress with many individually covered coils. Note the low bounce of the bowling ball on this mattress."
More recently, Simmons has popularized the use of a bowling ball in bedding ads, which just goes to show, Chase said, that "the bowling ball is not new" in modern bedding ads.
His Serta collection also includes an ad featuring Joey Heatherton in skimpy bedroom attire. "The Perfect Sleeper mattress by Serta gives you firmness and comfort without hardness," Heatherton says in that ad.
-
Top 10 bedding sources expanding lines
Apr 17, 2010 -
Bedding intros at High Point Market
Apr 14, 2012 -
Bedding majors aim to drive more traffic
Sep 14, 2009 -
Bedding producers offer many new lines
Apr 28, 2011 -
Wave of new lines lifts bedding
Mar 4, 2011
VIEW ALL GALLERIES
