Heer’s Bolster

Description from Manufaktur Heer

The genuine horsehair mattress is a HEER classic, made by four generations since 1907. Each mattress is build and stitched by hand. In its beautiful simplicity the mattress can be used without a cover. Due to the select fabrics its surface texture is equal to the finest gentleman’s suit fabric.

Materials

Daniel Heer brings exclusively prime materials to bear in all of his work.

Each mattress begins with the finest horsehair from the Toggenburger & Co in Marthalen, Switzerland. The spinnery, the only of its kind in Switzerland, has supplied all the white horsetail hair for the Rosshaarmatratzen slept on by the royal families of Sweden and England, including her majesty the Queen.

Leveraging the unique qualities of horsehair – incredibly elasticity, softness and tensile strength, and an unsurpassed ability to absorb moisture while eliminating odor and conserving heat.

HEER sourcing pure virgin shorn wool from sheep born and raised in Southern France.

For his classic sleeping mattresses HEER uses, a woven cottonwool ticking from England and, for daybeds and cushions, a gabardine-quality wool from the Danish textile studio Kvadrat. Clients are welcome to suggest their own ideas for fabrics as well.

„Built, Not Stuffed …“

Each Rosshaarmatratze begins with approximately 33 pounds of horsehair, or the hair from more than 40 horses. Daniel Heer begins his production process by creating the foundation of the mattress, methodically sculpting the horsehair into three layers that are two feet high. Then he sheathes the foundation in virgin fleece and begins dressing the mattress in fabric, first sewing the edges into rolls to give the mattress its basic form and then refining the shape with careful needlework around the edges. More than 1000 stitches are behind a classic 1m x 2m mattress. In the final step, he creates tufts or buttons by deconstructing the warp and weft of extra pieces from the same fabric to hold the horsehair interior in place inside the finished Rosshaarmatratze.

Lifetime

If a horsehair mattress is properly maintained– with a sunbath each year and refurbishing every 15 years by expert hands – it will last a lifetime and can be passed down from one generation to the next.