Hand made and carved details as well as hand finished.
The largest size we go to on all our beds the 6' Belle Lille offers all the space you need. A beautiful bed
with a ‘shabby chic’ painted distressed finish with 23 seperate processes to complete gives it a traditionally distressed tactile finish. Beneath the antique cream finish the Belle Lille sleigh bed is made from seasoned and kiln dried to 6-8% Swietenia mahogany superior to other types in the same way English oak is to French oak.
From a picture it's hard to see what it takes to arrive at the finish on the Belle Lille, possibly as far as you are concerned cream is cream but when you have the Belle Lille in your bedroom it will be immediately obvious that ther is far more to appreciate than just colour. We have specified an intensive process in the finish which is detailed below.
You will see from our photographs our finish is distressed, typically the distressed look you see in the high street stores is done by allowing a colour to dry and then wiping areas of the second coat in a different colour off with a sponge when still wet. From our point of view this is cheap and poor quality distressing. Our process incorporates very traditional methods involving skilled use of a 'cat of nine tails' with randomly shaped objects attached to the tails. The bed is effectively thrashed in a very controlled and skillfully applied manner.
In addition we use glass which we use to scrape distressed features. This technique is applied to the bed in the raw as well as throughout the hand applied process so we 'age the ageing'.
- White primer
- Second coat white primer
- Cream top coat
- Second cream top coat
- Antique finish applied
- Clear matt lacquer (protects the paint and gives a wipe clean surface)
