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By Morris Dye

Simon Horn, perhaps Europe's most illustrious bed manufacturer, has called the bedroom "the forgotten room." Not because our sleeping quarters are lacking in utility and comfort, but because we tend to lavish a much more refined sense of style on the public spaces in our homes.

"Up until relatively recently, this room was almost disregarded, because we were rather ashamed of it," Horn says. "It had a divan and a mattress, maybe a padded headboard, but nothing particularly interesting."

Horn's London-based enterprise is out to change all that with an unusual line of handcrafted wooden bed frames featuring elegant Old World designs adapted for the 21st-century bedroom.

All beds in the Simon Horn Ltd. collection recall a bygone era when luxury beds were much more than simply a place to spend the night. As early as the 15th century, European aristocrats were commissioning elaborate canopy beds they used not only for sleeping, but also for lounging, dining and even receiving formal guests.

By the 17th and 18th centuries, upper-class beds had grown larger and even more ornate, with all the intricate wood carving, gilding and decorative painting of a Baroque palace. During this time, Louis XIV of France is said to have owned an astonishing 413 beds — more than enough to sleep in a different bed every night of the year.

Later periods brought refined neoclassical, Empire and Victorian designs into European and American homes, with exquisite beds and daybeds prized by all who could afford them.

Horn, a former commodities trader who fell into the furniture business almost by accident, launched his company in 1982 to bring a sense of history back into the bedroom by offering high-quality reproductions of these great beds of the past. His designs are large enough to accommodate modern mattresses, yet each piece is crafted by hand from solid wood using traditional joinery, carving and decorative techniques.

"There are three collections in the Simon Horn line," explains Linda Flaherty, who represents the company's products in America. "There's the adult-bed-frame collection, the trundle collection and the nursery collection. The two most popular adult-bed frames are the Venetian, which is a four-poster Barley twist bed, and the Marie Antoinette."

Horn concedes that the latter model, a showy Second Empire-style piece carved from solid rosewood, is "a bit over the top," but many customers seem to crave the fantasy of sleeping like French royalty — even to the tune of about $18,000 for the king-size version. "It's another world they want to escape to," Horn says. "It's a dream world, a romantic world, and it doesn't look like their rather modern office which they left two or three hours before."

Flaherty says that all adult bed frames she sells on this side of the Atlantic are made to order and sized to fit American mattresses, which do not have the same dimensions as European mattresses. "These beds are large beds — most people buy them in the king size — and you need a sizable room to showcase them so that they look in scale with the room."

For smaller homes, the company offers a line of pull-out trundle beds in various styles that convert either to a pair of twin-size beds or to one large bed suitable for two. "Our trundle units have a unique mechanism," Flaherty says. "When the trundle pulls out, it's still connected to the main frame of the bed, and when it pops up, the two mattresses are flush together and it makes a queen-size sleeper."

Horn's most unusual creation, however, is a "metamorphic" baby crib modeled after a traditional French sleigh bed. In its initial configuration, the crib has delicately curved head- and footboards of equal height, and detachable panels on each side comprised of vertical slats spaced in accordance with federal safety regulations. As the baby grows, the side panels can be removed and the original foam mattress replaced with an inner-spring mattress to make a sweet and sophisticated child's bed. Later in life, one side panel is replaced, and bolsters and cushions are added to form a small sofa.

At $3,275 for the original cherry-wood model, or $2,800 with a painted white finish, parents will have to dig deep into their pocketbooks to billet their little bundle of joy in such high style, but Flaherty emphasizes that families can get long-term use out of a Simon Horn crib.

"It's really an heirloom piece, and it's investment buying. You're not going to store the crib in two years, and you're not going to give it away to the neighbor or sell it in a yard sale."