There were 62 pieces of art in the Shifman Mattresses showroom at the recent High Point Market. And that’s not counting the mattresses, which were presented as works of art in their own right.
The Newark, New Jersey-based bedding producer turned its showroom into an art gallery, displaying paintings from Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based Visual Index, a contemporary fine art and crafts gallery.
There was a local artist at work in the Shifman showroom, too. He was Les Caison III, and he was busy painting his interpretation of sleep. “It’s a lady under the covers, between clouds and the stars,” Caison said. “She’s dreaming. It’s a comforting scene of what happens when you sleep on a Shifman mattress.”
He described the style, which he executed with a super-saturated palette heavy on blues and reds, as “expressive realism.”
Shifman created the art theme to make a statement about its revamped Masters Collection, eight beds named after art masters and retailing from $5,500 to $9,500 for a queen model. The beds are crafted from artisanal cotton, mohair, New Zealand wool, horsehair and natural latex to provide cool, comfortable sleep, says Bill Hammer, Shifman’s president.
“Artists have to be inspired to create beautiful works of art,” he says. “Our inspiration comes from building handcrafted beds that will allow our retailers to be very profitable on our program, and to deliver a mattress that consumers will fall in love with every night when they climb into bed.”
The newest bed in the line, the Monet, joined the Cezanne, Chagall, Matisse, Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Rembrandt and Renoir models. The mattresses feature double-offset steel coils and are paired with eight-way, hand-tied boxsprings, a premium design that only a handful of producers still offer.
Hammer says the mattresses, like the art in the showroom, are handmade pieces of art. “Everything in the showroom,” he notes, “is handmade.”
The paintings were displayed beside and above the Shifman mattresses, giving the showroom an arty vibe. In keeping with the art theme, the key features of the mattresses were outlined on small wall labels that resembled the signs describing paintings in art museums and galleries.
A particularly striking painting in the front of the showroom was called “Burning Love,” by artist Pete Schroth. Toni Tronu, the curator of Visual Index, said the painting embodies “the passion that goes into love.” It was a conversation starter in the showroom.
Tronu says the paintings on loan from her gallery, which includes art from all 50 states, were all one-of-a-kind pieces, mostly by North Carolina artists.
The art-filled showroom was a good setting for Mark Quinn to make his first appearance for Shifman. Quinn, recently named senior vice president of sales and marketing, has a new canvas for his marketing work at Shifman, as I noted in my profile on him in one of our market daily stories.
He had a busy market welcoming retailers to the Shifman showroom and meeting with many longtime friends in the industry.
Hammer was pleased with Shifman’s High Point showing. He says retailers appreciated the abundance of art that elevated the displays in the showroom. Art and Shifman’s artfully made mattresses are a perfect combination, he says.
