If you happen to’ve ever looked for vintage beds, the title Jenny Lind could have popped up in dialog. It in all probability went like this: “I like that vintage twin mattress!” “Sure, isn’t it beautiful? It’s a Jenny Lind.” However who’s Jenny, and the way did she turn into synonymous with furnishings?
The Making of a Superstar
The inside design weblog Residence Remedy precisely referred to as Johanna Marie Lind the “the Lady Gaga” of her day. Within the mid-1800s, this porcelain-skinned soprano opera singer from Stockholm, Sweden, was already a beloved entertainer the Europeans referred to as “The Swedish Nightingale.” However in 1849, few in the USA had heard of her. Enter shrewd American promoter Phineas Taylor Barnum—sure, the same man who later marketed “The Best Present On Earth.” That yr he contracted with Lind to embark on a two-year live performance tour in America.
Barnum instantly started a advertising blitz all through the States, specializing in her singing expertise and character that he outlined as “charity, simplicity, and goodness personified.” In an age with out social media, a lot much less tv, Barnum targeted on constructing anticipation and shortage via licensed merchandise and live performance ticket auctions. Based on historian David Silberberg of The Misplaced Museum, Barnum created “a cultural phenomenon often known as ‘the superstar,’” and he bolstered Lind’s standing so successfully that forty thousand adoring followers greeted her ship because it entered the New York Metropolis harbor in 1850 to start her tour. In my view, it appears Barnum turned Lind into extra of a celebrity since Silberberg famous that Lind set the usual for measuring not simply singers or feminine artists however ladies normally at the moment. It’s clear that Lind reached goddess standing again within the day.
And the onslaught didn’t cease there. Whereas Barnum was the impetus for Lind’s reputation, different American retailers cashed in on her superstar by producing tour souvenirs, together with hats, gloves, cigars, glassware, and handkerchiefs. In an excerpt from his memoir Barnum, The Yankee Showman, Prince of Humbugs, Barnum wrote, “We had Jenny Lind gloves, Jenny Lind bonnets, Jenny Lind using hats… mantillas, robes, chairs, sofas, pianos—in reality all the things was Jenny Lind.”
The Jenny Lind Mattress
Among the many 1000’s of souvenirs manufactured throughout Lind’s tour, a wood mattress with turned spindles is the one piece that at present stays inextricably linked to the opera singer. Easy and steadfast with a timeless type, it options wood-frame spindles resembling thread spools. The Old House Journal referred to as it a “bobbin mattress,” including that the sort was round even earlier than the Pilgrims set foot at Plymouth in 1620.
Two tales join Lind with the mattress. The primary asserts {that a} Philadelphia furnishings maker positioned a novel mattress in Lind’s lodge and vowed to both title it after her or provide it as a present. The second story focuses on the household lore surrounding a Nineteenth-century mattress donated in 1969 to the Geneva Historic Society in New York. The legend claimed that Jenny Lind used the mattress whereas visiting a distinguished businessman in Connecticut in a city not removed from Barnum’s dwelling.
Whereas we’ll by no means know the precise story, the Outdated Home Journal added, it was “very seemingly the exhausted singer slept in a good variety of the spool beds that may later bear her title.”
A Good Mattress Even At the moment
The “Jenny Lind mattress” remains to be prevalent at present, be it an genuine antique or a later manufactured piece. This furnishings sort has lent itself primarily to youngsters’s furnishings, like twin beds, cribs, and rocking chairs “recognized by distinctive, if easy, turned rails and gildings,” in line with Outdated Home Journal.
Even with out the nickname, the wood spool mattress is a prolific piece of furnishings. A commenter on a blog put up in regards to the Jenny Lind mattress described it as “the little black costume of beds,” and I couldn’t agree extra. This piece appears like its heat vintage self in a darkish stain, solely to emerge elsewhere in a contemporary setting, decked out in white or a brightly painted shade. Both method, it appears fabulous.
Whereas you will discover authentic vintage Jenny Lind beds in vintage or thrift outlets, trendy interpretations of the type, together with beds, shelving models, and tables, can be found within the furniture market, like Crate & Barrel and Wayfair. I counsel utilizing “bobbin mattress,” “spool-turned mattress,” and “Jenny Lind” as key phrases for a profitable on-line search.
Amassing Different Jenny Lind Memorabilia
Along with furnishings, different Lind mementos are standard collectibles. Some are pricier, like a Calabash whiskey flask, a set of paper dolls, or a polychrome cast-iron dressing mirror. Cheap items like transferware bowls, a milk glass decanter, and a handkerchief box are additionally nice finds. Try WorthPoint®’s database to find different thrilling souvenirs and construct your assortment.
Protecting the Previous Current
If you happen to point out Jenny Lind at present, likelihood is somebody will at the least be conversant in the title, if not the title’s historical past. A Jenny Lind twin mattress circulated via my prolonged household for years. I imagine one in every of my cousins now has it, and if I requested her about “the Jenny Lind” at present, she would immediately know I meant that mattress. And even the Smithsonian magazine notes that in the USA at present, Arkansas, California, and North Carolina have cities named Jenny Lind. Her title additionally seems on faculties, church buildings, parks, and at the least thirty-three streets.
In the end, it’s a long-lasting testomony to the ability of savvy advertising that sustains the intriguing story of a Nineteenth-century opera singer who took 1850 America by storm.
Between excursions to hunt for antiques and classic décor, Lynda Houston is busy restoring her Nineteen Fifties cottage in Cincinnati, Ohio. She and her accomplice Dave Beck function TheRustInPeaceShop on Etsy.
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