A tick mattress, bed tick or tick is a large bag made of strong, stiff, tightly-woven material (
ticking Ticking is a type of cloth, traditionally a tightly-woven cotton or linen textile. It is traditionally used to cover tick mattresses and bed pillows. The tight weave makes it more durable and hinders the stuffing (straw, chaff, hair, down feathers, ...
). This is then filled to make a
mattress, with material such as straw,
chaff
Chaff (; ) is the dry, scaly protective casing of the seeds of cereal grains or similar fine, dry, scaly plant material (such as scaly parts of flowers or finely chopped straw). Chaff is indigestible by humans, but livestock can eat it. In agri ...
,
horsehair
Horsehair is the long hair growing on the manes and tails of horses. It is used for various purposes, including upholstery, brushes, the bows of musical instruments, a hard-wearing fabric called haircloth, and for horsehair plaster, a wallc ...
, coarse wool or
down feather
The down of birds is a layer of fine feathers found under the tougher exterior feathers. Very young birds are clad only in down. Powder down is a specialized type of down found only in a few groups of birds. Down is a fine thermal insulator an ...
s,
[Dictionnaire de l'ameublement et de la décoration depuis le XIIIe siècle jusqu'à nos jours, Havard, Henry, 1838-1921] and less commonly, leaves, grass, reeds, bracken, or seaweed.
The whole stuffed mattress may also, more loosely, be called a tick. The tick mattress may then be sewn through to hold the filling in place, or the unsecured filling could be shaken and smoothed as the beds were
aired each morning.
A straw-filled bed tick is called a paillasse, palliasse, or pallet, and these terms may also be used for bed ticks with other fillings. A tick filled with
flock (loose, unspun fibers, traditionally of cotton or wool) is called a flockbed. A feather-filled tick is called a featherbed, and a down-filled one a downbed; these can also be used above the sleeper, as a
duvet
A duvet (, ; ), usually called a comforter or (''down-filled'') quilt in US English, and a doona in Australian English, is a type of bedding consisting of a soft flat bag filled with either down, feathers, wool, cotton, silk, or a synthetic a ...
.
A tick mattress (or a pile of such tick mattresses, softest topmost, and the sheets, bedcovers, and pillows), was what Europeans traditionally called a "bed". The
bedframe
A bed frame or bedstead is the part of a bed used to position the bed base, the flat part which in turn directly supports the mattress(es). The frame may also stop the matresses from sliding sideways, and it may include means of supporting a c ...
, when present, supported the bed, but was not considered part of it.
[Dictionnaire de l'ameublement et de la décoration depuis le XIIIe siècle jusqu'à nos jours, Havard, Henry, 1838-1921]
History
In the fifteenth century, most people in Europe slept on straw, but very rich people had featherbeds on top (for instance,
Anne of Brittany
Anne of Brittany (; 25/26 January 1477 – 9 January 1514) was reigning Duchess of Brittany from 1488 until her death, and Queen of France from 1491 to 1498 and from 1499 to her death. She is the only woman to have been queen consort of France ...
's ladies in waiting slept on straw beds). By the nineteenth century many people had feather beds.
If the pile of mattresses threatened to slide off the bed, in 16th- and 17th-century England it was restrained with
bedstaves, vertical poles thrust into the frame. A broad step might be placed alongside the bed, as a place to sit and as a step up onto the pile of bedclothes.
Bedticks were often
aired, often by hanging them outdoors, as bedding is still aired in parts of Europe and in East Asia. In English-speaking cultures, however, airing bedding outdoors came to be seen as a foreign practice, with 19th-century housekeeping manuals giving methods of airing beds inside, and disparaging airing them in the window as "German-style".
Stuffings
Straw
Straw is an agricultural byproduct consisting of the dry stalks of cereal plants after the grain and chaff have been removed. It makes up about half of the yield of cereal crops such as barley, oats, rice, rye and wheat. It has a number ...
and
hay
Hay is grass, legumes, or other herbaceous plants that have been cut and dried to be stored for use as animal fodder, either for large grazing animals raised as livestock, such as cattle, horses, goats, and sheep, or for smaller domesticat ...
are cheap and abundant stuffings. The
chaff
Chaff (; ) is the dry, scaly protective casing of the seeds of cereal grains or similar fine, dry, scaly plant material (such as scaly parts of flowers or finely chopped straw). Chaff is indigestible by humans, but livestock can eat it. In agri ...
of a local grain, be it
rice
Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice) or less commonly ''Oryza glaberrima
''Oryza glaberrima'', commonly known as African rice, is one of the two domesticated rice species. It was first domesticated and grown i ...
chaff or
oat
The oat (''Avena sativa''), sometimes called the common oat, is a species of cereal grain grown for its seed, which is known by the same name (usually in the plural, unlike other cereals and pseudocereals). While oats are suitable for human con ...
chaff, is softer but less abundant. Reeds,
bracken
Bracken (''Pteridium'') is a genus of large, coarse ferns in the family Dennstaedtiaceae. Ferns (Pteridophyta) are vascular plants that have alternating generations, large plants that produce spores and small plants that produce sex cells (eggs ...
, seaweed, and
esparto grass
Esparto, halfah grass, or esparto grass is a fiber produced from two species of perennial grasses of north Africa, Spain and Portugal. It is used for crafts, such as cords, basketry, and espadrilles. '' Stipa tenacissima'' and '' Lygeum spart ...
have also been used.
Horsehair
Horsehair is the long hair growing on the manes and tails of horses. It is used for various purposes, including upholstery, brushes, the bows of musical instruments, a hard-wearing fabric called haircloth, and for horsehair plaster, a wallc ...
and flock make for firmer beds.
Rags have also been used.
Before recycled cotton cloth was widely available in Japan, commoners slept upon , stitched crinkled paper stuffed with fibers from beaten dry straw,
cattail
''Typha'' is a genus of about 30 species of monocotyledonous flowering plants in the family Typhaceae. These plants have a variety of common names, in British English as bulrush or reedmace, in American English as reed, cattail, or punks, in A ...
s, or silk waste, on top of straw floor mats. Cotton was introduced from
Korea
Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...
in the 15th century, but did not become widely available throughout Japan until the mid-eighteenth; commoners continued to rely on wild and cultivated
bast fiber
Bast fibre (also called phloem fibre or skin fibre) is plant fibre collected from the phloem (the "inner bark", sometimes called "skin") or bast surrounding the stem of certain dicotyledonous plants. It supports the conductive cells of the phlo ...
s.
Later, futon ticks were made with
patchwork recycled cotton, quilted together and filled with
bast fiber
Bast fibre (also called phloem fibre or skin fibre) is plant fibre collected from the phloem (the "inner bark", sometimes called "skin") or bast surrounding the stem of certain dicotyledonous plants. It supports the conductive cells of the phlo ...
.
Later still, they were filled with cotton, mattresses and coverlets both. Wool and synthetics are now also used.
Leaves can be used to fill ticks; they vary in quality by species and time of year. Chestnut-leaves are prone to rustle, and were therefore called parliament-beds in 17th-century France. Beech leaves were a quieter stuffing; if harvested in autumn before they were "much frostbitten", stayed soft and loose and did not become musty for seven or eight years, far longer than straw.
Beech-leaf beds were also said to smell of green tea and crackle slightly, and be as soft an elastic as
maize-husk beds.
Swapping out the stuffing was often done seasonally, as materials became available. Travellers might carry ticks, but not the stuffing, buying whatever filling was cheap locally.
For expensive fillings, like feathers, the feathers would outlast the tick, and be transferred into a new tick when they began to poke through old one.
Featherbeds may be washed intact, or feathers and tick can be cleaned separately. Since featherbeds were historically very valuable, and the feathers often took years to collect, they were not simply discarded and replaced. Indeed, they were taken along by migrants and mentioned in wills.
Featherbeds were often made with feathers saved from poultry plucked for eating (servants were often allowed to keep the feathers they plucked). It took about to fill a tick. Goose and duck feathers were most valued (chicken feathers were undesirable), and down was softer and more valuable than other feathers.
Tufting and quilting
To hold the filling in place, either sturdy individual securing stitches can be made through the tick and the filling (tufting), or the mattress can be
quilted with lines of stitches.
Both techniques are also used decoratively.
[
Individual tufting stitches for stronger materials and harder fillings are made with a stronger thread or twine. An extra-long ]upholstery
Upholstery is the work of providing furniture, especially seats, with padding, springs, webbing, and fabric or leather covers. The word also refers to the materials used to upholster something.
''Upholstery'' comes from the Middle English w ...
needle may be needed to pass the thread through the tick easily. Sometimes the stitches are finished with buttons on each side (often covered buttons).
Mattress quilting is done in a variety of patterns. Denser stitching makes the mattress firmer.
Unsewn ticking sheets
The lowest layer might be covered with a length of ticking instead of stuffed into a tick, which made it easier to change. Henry VII of England
Henry VII (28 January 1457 – 21 April 1509) was King of England and Lord of Ireland from his seizure of the crown on 22 August 1485 until his death in 1509. He was the first monarch of the House of Tudor.
Henry's mother, Margaret Beaufort ...
's bed had a lower layer of loose straw:
Such simple beds were also used as the only mattress
See also
* Futon
A is a traditional Japanese style of bedding.
A complete futon set consists of a and a . Both elements of a futon bedding set are pliable enough to be folded and stored away in a large during the day. This allows a room to serve as a bedr ...
s, Japanese tick mattresses
* Ticking Ticking is a type of cloth, traditionally a tightly-woven cotton or linen textile. It is traditionally used to cover tick mattresses and bed pillows. The tight weave makes it more durable and hinders the stuffing (straw, chaff, hair, down feathers, ...
, cloth used to make ticks.
References
{{reflist
Bedding
Upholstery