Massive bed tests skills of 2 furniture makers

• By SONYA KIMBRELL
• Ascension staff writer
• Published: Aug 21, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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PRAIRIEVILLE — When Gonzales cabinetmaker Kevin Berthelot got a call with a special request for a bed, he called his friend David Oubre.

“I knew he could build it,” Berthelot said.

Berthelot’s customer wanted a bed built in the style of Prudent Mallard.

Mallard’s beds were four-poster half-tester canopy beds usually 9 feet by 8 feet with massive bedposts.

It’s not clear whether the 19th-century Mallard designed the beds or merely sold them from his New Orleans shop, but he has been labeled a leading cabinetmaker from New Orleans in the antebellum era.

Beds with a Mallard pedigree sell in the $30,000 to $40,000 range.

Oubre, a former industrial arts teacher at East Ascension High School, had already built one bed in the Mallard style, but this recently commissioned piece was larger.

After serving for 33 years in the school system, Oubre retired eight years ago from the Ascension Parish School Board as supervisor of vocational education.

Oubre and Berthelot drew the plans for the bed, which included cloverleaf posts.

“But we weren’t really sure how to build it,” Berthelot said.

The similar bed that Oubre had built was smaller with plain posts, he said.

So part of the process involved a sort of scavenger hunt.

Every time Oubre would visit an old house for an estate sale or for a tour, he’d ask about beds in the house.