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If as Ovid said "There
is nothing in the whole world which is "permanent"
, Brass and Iron beds come very close to making
a liar out of the old poet.
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It
was with that in mind that twenty-five years ago Joshua Parker
started to sell brass beds. He remembered that as a young man,
seeking abandoned roman copper mines through the mountains of
Spain on behalf of a Canadian mining company, often he had found
antique oil lamps in the fields. They were hundreds and maybe
thousand of years old and yet they had endured and remained in
remarkably good condition. He knew that the brass bed he sold
would be just as durable.
He also
noted that young couples often did not purchase the bed they
really wanted simply because they could not afford it. So he
decided to offer them the possibility to trade their purchase
for the bed of their dream at anytime in the future without any
depreciation. To this day Joshua offers his customers full
trade-in value on the all beds he sells.
At first the
business was a bit of an odyssey. Learning as he went along, he
made sure that his customers always received the best service. Today
he recalls with a grimace the saga of the peeling lacquer. Shortly
after one of his suppliers had gone out of business, Josh
discovered to his horror that the lacquer applied to the brass
beds to prevent them from tarnishing was defective, it peeled.
What was he to do, obviously he could not go back to the
defunct manufacturing company. Finally he found a small but reliable
workshop and was able to get the beds refinished. For Josh
not was it a very expensive lesson but also a very important one
"if you can. t have the best lacquer, better to
have none at all". He never deviated from this dictum and
for years he sold natural brass beds and refused to sell anything
that was lacquered.
Years later
he finally found the quality he was looking for, beds made in
Italy by the Lipparini family. Joshua had finally found the best.
The best designs, the best manufacturing and the best protective clear finish.
He has traveled to Italy many times since and over the course
of time he has discovered a few other high quality manufacturers
but Lipparini will always occupy a special place in his heart.
When you meet him or his brother Ivor in their Yorkville store
in the core of elegant shopping in Toronto, they will point out
with pride the finest brass beds in the world. Silver plated,
even gold plated brass beds, decorated and assembled with perfectly
matching brass castings. He will tell you how other manufacturers
tried to copy the work and how they could never match the colour
and the detailing of a Lipparini cast brass bed. You might
smile as he tries to shake a Lipparini bed to demonstrate the
sturdiness of the construction. No rattling, no squeaking, a
Lipparini bed frame is superior.
What is true of
brass is true in hand forged wrought iron. Lipparini's creations
cannot be compared, neither in originality of design nor in quality of execution.
