ARTICLE “BEDS – IN SEARCH OF HOME”, BY WILTON GUERRA
In our last article we talked about the Network, an important home appliance in the Brazilian house, which was present in the Americas even before the arrival of the Portuguese and Spanish, and was one of the first elements of the process of cultural assimilation between indigenous peoples and the white man . Continuing our reflection, in this essay we will explore the presence of the bed in the Brazilian house. Unlike the chain, this piece of furniture, currently indispensable for our rest, only became representative among household equipment after the 1920s, when industrial production in series allowed the base of the middle class and above all the working classes to have access to quality furniture at a low cost.
In search of reports that can present our readers with the presence of beds and their uses in Brazil, especially in the first four centuries, we will rely on the almost inexhaustible sources of the Ernani Silva Bruno Archive. An archive of 28,900 records produced in the 1970s, which includes 53 authors, 147 works by chroniclers, travelers and novelists, letters and family inventories and testaments, about the Brazilian house and its home equipment, an unprecedented documentary corpus in the historiography and Brazilian museology.
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*Wilton Guerra has served as manager of the Research and Documentation Preservation Center at the MCB (area responsible for the collection), since 2006. He holds a Bachelor’s degree and a degree in History from PUC-SP (2003), a master’s degree in Museology from USP (2015) and a technician in museums by the Paula Souza Center (2007). Since 1998, he is a researcher at the Museu da Casa Brasileira (MCB). In 2000, he organized three volumes (Architecture, Objects and Equipment) from the collection “Equipment, Uses and Customs of Casa Brasileira”. In 2005, he coordinated the project “Virtual Collection – Equipment, Uses and Customs of the Brazilian House” (Ernani Silva Bruno Archive), which made the MCB collection available for consultation on the institution’s website and on CD-Rom, for distribution in educational institutions. teaching and libraries. In recent years, he has actively participated in research and development of exhibitions, among them: “Renata e Fábio – A Casa e a Cidade” (2006); “MCB Collection” (2007); “The Brazilian House of MCB – Memórias de um Acervo” (2008); “The House and the City – Crespi-Prado Collection” and “Wood and Furniture – A look at the MCB Collection” (2012).
