Bed Books

If you would like any hi-res images of these photos, or if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me: tamarstone@pipeline.com

Images Copyright © 2008 by Tamar Stone. All Rights Reserved.
No images may be reproduced without the expressed written permission of the artist.

The Bed Story

The more I read about women’s lives being constricted by their clothes, social mores etc. combined with the fact that I have an interest in the history of housework, I became more interested in what was happening to women in their homes.

Because women have always been associated with the home, hearth and all the domestic duties that belong to them, this project is about memories and moments that are attached to specific objects within our homes − specifically beds. In order to create a more intimate experience, these stories are told with the use of doll beds as well as salesman sample beds.

Historically our life cycle begins and ends in the bed, from being born in a bed, and then dying

in one. As children we used the bed as an impromptu trampoline or tent. As we got older, it became the place in which intimacies are shared with significant others. It used to be that all of our life cycles (birth, sickness, death) occurred in our beds, in the family home. In the second half of the 20th century so much of our lives have been taken out of the home and moved to places where we become handled by specialists i.e. the hospital bed or any other specialized institution.

I realize that these things have been shared by both men and women but since women tend to be the primary housekeeper of the home (and for a long time were considered the center of family life), this project focuses on girls/women and their thoughts and stories about their beds.

It is because of these domestic associations, that in order to read these intimate stories the reader must unmake each bed, pulling back the covers to “turn the pages.” In order to close the book, one must re-make the bed, mimicking the actions of women’s housework that have been done for centuries.

I hope to make this a full-scale project someday; originally this project was to be a life-size installation, where each of the beds had stories stitched into the bed coverings telling a story. Ideally, there will be enough life size beds to fill a large space divided into different rooms, each filled with beds that would have stories relating to that room. i.e. the childhood room, hospital room, army tent etc.

Descriptions of these pieces can be found on each individual page.