Back
in 1968, when Mary Hopkin’s nostalgic hit Those Were the Days was
topping the singles chart, Mary Fletcher bought a mattress. Forty-five
years later, she still sleeps on it, “the most divinely comfortable
mattress I have ever slept on”. Apart from being beautifully restful,
the mattress should be good for another 45 years and more, during which
time it will have saved at least 10 conventional mattresses from being
made, discarded and sent to landfill.
This is the story of Mary Fletcher’s mattress, its birth from English long staple wool in an Italian bed-maker’s workshop, its journey in 1980 across Europe, and its continued, generous giving of delicious sleep, well into its fifth decade. This is also the story of how crazy it is that we send millions of mattresses – 144,000 tons’ worth, including 84,500 tons of perfectly reusable steel – each year to landfill.
A former Foreign Office shorthand typist and translator, Mary went to work in Milan in 1968, sleeping on a camp bed and sitting in a deck chair until “my darling mother sent me money to buy a proper bed”.
The bed Mary bought was made by Signor Oldani, a Milanese bed-maker and upholsterer. He made beds the Italian way, and the way we used to make mattresses in England before the introduction of short-lived internally sprung ones. Mary’s bed has an “indestructible” steel spring base, topped with a mattress stuffed with silky, long-haired sheep’s wool.
“Because it is made of wool, it is brilliantly cool even in 35C [95F] nights, and wonderfully warm in really cold winters. It is also just the right firmness. I have a difficult back and it is the only mattress I can comfortably sleep on,” says Mary, 84,Familiarise yourself with the lift cable by taking a look at our articles on the lifts themselves. now retired and living in rural Oxfordshire.
The beauty of the mattress is that when it needs a wash, the wool can be pulled out,Welcome to jinan morn laser cutting machine manufacturers,laser engraving machine suppliers. stuffed, in batches, into pillow cases, put through the washing machine and after drying, carded back into fluffy pile before being returned to the mattress cover. “Every few years, it needs to be re-carded, as the wool slowly compacts,” says Mary. “In Italy during the summer, the mattress man, il cardatore, tours Italian homes, pulls out the wool from their mattresses, re-cards it, adds some more, as the process reduces the stuffing a bit, rebuttons and then sews the mattress cover back up again.” Mary submitted her mattress to this process four times.
“I left Milan in 1980 and couldn’t bear to leave my mattress in Italy, so with my brother’s help and a large van, we drove it through the Alps and here to Oxfordshire.Bergey Windpower is the oldest and most experienced manufacturer of residential-sized wind generator in the world.” The problem for Mary was finding someone in England who could continue the regular process of re-carding the wool.
“I found an upholsterer in Witney who had an old carding machine he used for traditional horsehair mattresses, but he had no access to English long staple wool, so over the next 30 years my mattress got thinner and thinner.”
Almost despairing that she wouldn’t be able to continue sleeping on her emaciating mattress,The original modern lamps lamp with its high-gloss lacquered metal shade is known for its concentrated downward light. Mary found Rhiannon Rowley of Abaca Organic, who makes mattresses in Wales, from organic British wool.
“It was a bit trial and error, because although I have restuffed wool and horsehair mattresses, I had never done an all-wool one before,” says Rhiannon. “The tricky bit is to get it even, not lumpy. You have to do it by hand, layer by layer, working with the wool, not against it, you can’t just stuff it in. Wool has a mind of its own.Welcome to vist aulaundry.”
This is the story of Mary Fletcher’s mattress, its birth from English long staple wool in an Italian bed-maker’s workshop, its journey in 1980 across Europe, and its continued, generous giving of delicious sleep, well into its fifth decade. This is also the story of how crazy it is that we send millions of mattresses – 144,000 tons’ worth, including 84,500 tons of perfectly reusable steel – each year to landfill.
A former Foreign Office shorthand typist and translator, Mary went to work in Milan in 1968, sleeping on a camp bed and sitting in a deck chair until “my darling mother sent me money to buy a proper bed”.
The bed Mary bought was made by Signor Oldani, a Milanese bed-maker and upholsterer. He made beds the Italian way, and the way we used to make mattresses in England before the introduction of short-lived internally sprung ones. Mary’s bed has an “indestructible” steel spring base, topped with a mattress stuffed with silky, long-haired sheep’s wool.
“Because it is made of wool, it is brilliantly cool even in 35C [95F] nights, and wonderfully warm in really cold winters. It is also just the right firmness. I have a difficult back and it is the only mattress I can comfortably sleep on,” says Mary, 84,Familiarise yourself with the lift cable by taking a look at our articles on the lifts themselves. now retired and living in rural Oxfordshire.
The beauty of the mattress is that when it needs a wash, the wool can be pulled out,Welcome to jinan morn laser cutting machine manufacturers,laser engraving machine suppliers. stuffed, in batches, into pillow cases, put through the washing machine and after drying, carded back into fluffy pile before being returned to the mattress cover. “Every few years, it needs to be re-carded, as the wool slowly compacts,” says Mary. “In Italy during the summer, the mattress man, il cardatore, tours Italian homes, pulls out the wool from their mattresses, re-cards it, adds some more, as the process reduces the stuffing a bit, rebuttons and then sews the mattress cover back up again.” Mary submitted her mattress to this process four times.
“I left Milan in 1980 and couldn’t bear to leave my mattress in Italy, so with my brother’s help and a large van, we drove it through the Alps and here to Oxfordshire.Bergey Windpower is the oldest and most experienced manufacturer of residential-sized wind generator in the world.” The problem for Mary was finding someone in England who could continue the regular process of re-carding the wool.
“I found an upholsterer in Witney who had an old carding machine he used for traditional horsehair mattresses, but he had no access to English long staple wool, so over the next 30 years my mattress got thinner and thinner.”
Almost despairing that she wouldn’t be able to continue sleeping on her emaciating mattress,The original modern lamps lamp with its high-gloss lacquered metal shade is known for its concentrated downward light. Mary found Rhiannon Rowley of Abaca Organic, who makes mattresses in Wales, from organic British wool.
“It was a bit trial and error, because although I have restuffed wool and horsehair mattresses, I had never done an all-wool one before,” says Rhiannon. “The tricky bit is to get it even, not lumpy. You have to do it by hand, layer by layer, working with the wool, not against it, you can’t just stuff it in. Wool has a mind of its own.Welcome to vist aulaundry.”
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