A Midsummer night's dream... in the closet. Why in the Middle ages Europeans were sleeping in cupboards and drawers

Over the centuries, the concept of personal space was very abstract. Privacy for sleeping can afford very few. The poor lived in small huts, where they lived three generations of the family, and the aristocracy was forced to share a bedchamber with guards and servants. Even king Henry V in the first wedding night with Catherine of Valois, shared a bedroom with the Manager and the Chamberlain. Sex in such cases was created canopies over the beds or... wooden crates, similar to cabinets.

In Britain, Scotland, France, Holland and Germany several centuries used to sleep unusual wooden structures, like furniture storage and products. Bed-the box was a free-standing or built-in niche in the wall fitment, inside of which was all that was needed for a comfortable sleep — Comforter, pillow, blanket and, most importantly, privacy.

Bed-box on the picture of the "mother's duty" by Pieter de Hooch

Oddly enough, but in the time of Shakespeare in England slept in the drawers of almost everyone who could afford to order or to make himself at least the most primitive shelter. Knights, fair ladies, archbishops, and even the citizens of relatively wealthy farmers prefer beds with canopy exactly sweltering, but such a cozy wooden box.

Door drawer for sleep closed on the lock or at least close blackout curtains. However, the first option was the most popular because of the intimate setting — it's not all that was required from the product. The box, designed for one or two people, well-kept warm in cold seasons and shut it down from drafts that had been in the middle Ages commonplace for the Palace of the peer and the hut of a woodcutter.

Another feature of the box was the security of the owner. The days were very hectic and the house could get if not the thief, the ravenous beast. Closing the door of the house on the latch, and then closing from the inside in the box-beds, European feel in relative safety.

Many researchers believe that in peasant families in the boxes, the adults locked the children when they went into the field to work. In addition, this furniture was often used by the owners for storing valuables. With this purpose, the outside has established a solid lock, and the doors and walls of the structure maximize.

Going to sleep, the owner of the box took all the most valuable. The authors of the encyclopedia described it like this:

Over the centuries, to the beds, and the boxes are so accustomed, that they could not refuse and in modern times. In the XVIII and XIX centuries in many wealthy homes of Europe has actively used this furniture, despite the large number of bedrooms, heating and no danger.In the late eighteenth century many furniture workshops offered to our customers these boxes are for sleeping, disguised as bookcases and chests of drawers. In this furniture the owner of the house could hide from annoying guests or creditors, leaving them in complete bewilderment.

But in the XIX century the fashion for beds of this type was held. The Europeans ' concern with hygiene and fresh air forced them to gradually abandon the ancient custom to climb before going to sleep in the box. Despite this, in some villages of Scotland and Ireland similar structures were used in the early twentieth century. Today, these strange beds can be seen in the Museum, where they arouse the interest and many questions from tourists.

It is safe to say that the product of NVO Box offered to the students of famous channel is nothing but rethought and adapted to the reality of a box for sleeping.