Hi Maxie,
[quote]Were horse hair mattresses ever made in the United States or imported from Europe?
Now is my time to replace the Aero air bed for a real deal. I’ve thought of the horse hair bed from memory of how well I slept on it. I need support for the lower back area.
Springy beds that bounce and Airbeds are off my list.
Do you have suggestions or advice?
Is there any bed out there that has the durability and quality as the horse hair mattress/bed?[/quote]
Horsehair is a high quality and costly natural fiber that has similar properties to wool except to a greater degree. Like wool it has great ventilation and has great temperature regulating properties because of its ability to store moisture inside the fiber and away from the skin to maintain a drier and more temperature regulating microclimate and sleeping surface. It is also more resilient and “springy” than wool. It is a very high quality material that isn’t often seen any more in today’s market outside of more premium mattresses because of its higher cost (see one of the VI Spring mattresses here for an example).
While you won’t likely find a mattress that only uses horsehair because it’s generally just one of the materials in a mattress … some manufacturers that still make mattresses that contain horsehair are listed in my previous rely to you in another topic in post #9 here although you will find that mattresses that use horsehair are generally in more premium budget ranges.
There are certainly other materials that are very durable (including latex, higher density memory foam or polyfoam, other natural fibers such as wool, buckling column gel, good quality innersprings and others). I would also keep in mind that while a particular mattress that uses horsehair may be a great “match” for you in terms of PPP (Posture and alignment, Pressure relief, and Personal preferences) … another one that uses it may be completely unsuitable for you to sleep on depending on all the other materials and components in the mattress and how well the mattress “as a whole” matches your specific needs and preferences. It’s also possible that none of the horsehair mattresses that you may consider will “match” the horsehair mattress you remember either because human memory for more subjective things such as “feel” is very short term or because the mattress may be a completely different design even if the materials are similar.
Phoenix