Supporting British Industry & Craftsmanship
Savoir Beds manufacturer high end mattresses that are created from natural materials such as curled horsetail, cashmere, lambs wool and cotton. The company is best known for creating The Savoy Bed which was first made in 1905 for the Savoy Hotel.
The roots of Savoir Beds go back to The Savoy Hotel. The impresario and hotel founder Richard D'Oyly Carte was obssessed with quality. From 1905 the hotel's beds were specially made by the upholstery firm James Edwards in a workshop off Drury Lane. The firm came to be owned by The Savoy and renamed the Savoy Bedworks, it made and repaired beds only for the hotel and others in the Savoy group. When the hotel was sold in the 1990s Alistair Hughes bought the bed workshop side of the business and together with his business partner Stephen Winston and renamed it Savoir Beds. Nowadays the workforce is split between their workshops in Wales and London. They make around 650 and 350 beds a year respectively and the average price for a bed is £20,000. The London site is in the former Carlsberg brewery and inside there are two lines of production - each worker has an oak tool board and a bench. Although the business was built on hotels, today 95% of its beds go to private clients. About half are exported, and Savoir Beds has sixteen showrooms around the world, eight of which are franchised.
"Once you have walked around this factory you realise why a Savoir mattresses cost £20,000. Each mattress is bench-made, from the hand-tying of springs eight ways, the hand tufting with a long needle and hand-sewing the ticking closed - the whole process is extremely labour intensive. The materials include wool, cashmere and horsetail hair - an expensive and difficult material to work with but gives the mattress superior breathability and moisture-wicking. The company deliberately makes no more than 800-1,000 beds a year." Carmel King photographed Savoir Beds in November 2021 for Made in London.
