It takes 120 hours and 115 years
of experience to handmake
a Savoir bed – a process so long
and painstaking that even the
fabric needs to have a lie down...To the right of the sewing room, lying flat on a shelf, a piece of fabric is taking some time out. A whole day, in fact. ‘It relaxes for at least 24 hours,’ says Alistair Hughes, managing director of Savoir bedmakers, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. ‘Well, it’s cut from a roll so we start with a bigger piece than we need because it will shrink. Then, we can cut to the exact size.’ Without cutting any metaphorical corners.

When it can take 120 hours to make one Savoir bed, time is not a concern; it’s a virtue for a brand that has stayed true to 115 year-old values and techniques because they cannot be bettered. The fabric in question – this particular piece will eventually belong to Kelly from
Singapore – is the trademark Trellis ticking, a repeat jacquard pattern designed by Lady D’Oyly Carte in 1905, which still covers every Savoir mattress today.

She was the wife of impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte, who opened the Savoy Hotel in London in 1889 and commissioned upholster James Edwards Limited to create the ultimate bed for his famous guests. Such was its perfection that D’Oyly Carte bought the manufacturer in 1924 and created The Savoy Bedworks. In 1997, when Hughes took over the business, it became Savoir Beds (and, last year, just Savoir, after a rebrand by agency Without).
But more than a century since it was first made, the original bed continues to be Savoir’s bestseller. Only the name (it’s now called The No.2) and the celebrities have changed. Instead of Winston Churchill and Marilyn Monroe, actress Emma Thompson swears – in a handwritten thank-you letter to Hughes – that her Savoir bed cured her insomnia.

‘The way we operate is that one craftsman makes one product for one client,’ Hughes explains, as we walk round the workshop. ‘From receiving the wooden base, which is made downstairs in woodwork, it will take Mohamed – hi Mohamed – the best part of a week to finish the bed,’ he says, stopping at the craftsman’s workbench, where Mohamed is hand-stitching the edge of a mattress filled with temperature regulating horsehair, a Savoir process that protects the mattress springs and ensures that the edges never sag. ‘It’s not a production line,’ Hughes continues, as we watch the precision star-lashing technique of Pawel. ‘It means we can make it bespoke; no one has to wait for anyone else and they take pride in what they do.’
 Today, seven different beds are being made on the upstairs floor of the north London factory, a light and lofty space that feels more like a studio; the relative quiet punctuated by the sound of what appear to be large staplers. Savoir makes-to-order fewer than 1,000 beds per year, which include The No.1 (120 hours to make); The No.2 (80 hours); The No.3 (60 hours); and The No.4 (30 hours). But every bed has the same DNA, underpinned by hand-tied six-turn pocket springs and hand side-stitching of the mattress. 

Each model also features three distinct parts. The box-spring, designed to take your weight and protect the mattress. The mattress itself, designed to take your shape. And finally, the topper. ‘That’s the layer of fantastic, delicious comfort on top,’ says Hughes, adding that a mattress and boxspring should last for 25 years – if you look after it – while a topper should normally be changed every five. ‘Sleep is important. Our aim is to make fantastic beds from natural materials, using traditional techniques. But only if the techniques are better. We want to make the best beds; if tradition allows, fine, if not, we need to change what we’re doing.’

Downstairs in woodwork, a CNC machine is used to cut all the wood because the method is far more efficient. ‘The stuff we do by hand, up here where most of the hours are spent, is because that’s the best way to do it,’ Hughes explains, pointing to Pier, who is stuffing a mattress with carded, cloud-like horsehair. ‘The only way you can lay hair is by hand. You need to feel it and no machine can do that. Craft makes sense if it does a better job, but cutting timber ismore accurate with a machine.’
Yet even the automated processes are tailored to Savoir specifications. The bespoke hourglass-shaped springs are made on a machine from the 1980s, purchased on eBay and reconfigured to align with Savoir’s values of using natural materials. ‘It’s pretty Wallace & Gromit,’ Hughes laughs. ‘Nowadays people generally use polypropylene, which you glue, to cover the springs. We want to use cotton and we want to sew. So we had to replace the heat gun glue heads with these sewing machines. It’s complicated but it gives us the results we want.’ 

For a managing director, with a degree in Economics from Cambridge, Hughes sounds like he must be an expert in bedmaking, never missing a detail, however small, of the time-honoured process. Could he build a Savoir bed? He bursts out laughing. ‘Could I make a bed? No! You wouldn’t want me to make a bed, trust me. Theory is very different from practice.’ savoirbeds.com
WORDS ANA SANTI | PHOTOGRAPHS ROBERT BROADBENT