Our History

Tricia and David Bersano have been residents of Richmond, Virginia for 22 years, both having grown up in the fast-paced, culturally-diverse Washington, D.C. area.

Their love of history, fine art and architecture drew them to the historic neighborhood called the Fan District in Richmond.

The Fan District is a group of about 3,000 homes from the Victorian Period. The Bersano home and shop, built in 1913, are based on the Second Empire and Italianate styles in architecture, in a time of a revival of many design styles. The Shop was originally a Confectionary in 1913.

This exposure to the multiple styles of architecture has influenced and enhanced Ms. Bersano's designs over the years.

The design curriculum at VCU is where Tricia realized one of her finest and strongest design talents was in furniture design. VCU is where her skills of the design process, drawing, drafting and rendering were honed. Her background in the use of fabrics and other textiles in design and construction date from childhood and provided a strong foundation for study at VCU.

With an Old Italian family background, David has been working with wood since the age of ten, demonstrating an innate ability for furniture making, beyond his formal years of training. This would prove to be an excellent complement for Tricia's furniture designs.

Bersano & Bersano have combined their talents providing services to clients as a team, building custom cabinetry when the project demands. Tricia designs and drafts the pieces, and David builds from the working drawings. And, this is the chemistry that now produces The Couture Doll Bed.

"Bringing designs to life... concepts and ideas into reality... is this designer's most rewarding experience. It is truly magical."

Origins of the Couture Doll Bed

With the addition of a little girl to the family in 1997, Ms. Bersano, over time, tried to find a doll bed for her daughter, but with her designer's eye, was not enthused with the beds on the market. Most were white, unimaginative in line, with little or no linens and, more importantly, the beds were out of scale and proportion with a doll's size.

The designer thought "someone needs to design a real doll bed."

Designers often pull inspirations for designs from a culmination of experiences: their education, especially in history, places they've visited, places they've traveled; art they've seen, literature they've read and films they've viewed.

The Couture Doll Bed concept is based on all these experiences, but most especially one area: a book, A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, that tells a story of a little girl relegated to living in an attic. Inspiration also came from the stories of Little Women where she often imagined the house and interiors of Louisa May Alcott's famous characters.

Spurred on by her daughter's love of her dolls, and those visions and stories lasting years in her memory, Ms. Bersano decided to bring The Couture Doll Bed to life... in this past year... for the very popular 18" dolls.

The Couture Doll Bed evokes this image of this little bed in an attic outfitted for a little girl as a princess with a sweet, lovely curved pine headboard trimmed with a carved wreath, outfitted in all the petticoats and linens, with fur pillows and throws and coverlets to keep warm.

A bed, also, that one could find Little Women characters sitting in while chatting or reading. A bed that is individual and feminine and special. The designer uses the contrast of the humble pine bed frame with the opulent overflow of linens to achieve this effect.

Because the bed is a "designed piece" using "the Principles and Elements of Design" of symmetry, variety, repetition, balance, and contrast, among others, the complete bed not only provides hours of delight to children as they play with the frame and linens but it also exposes them to fine textiles, materials and workmanship, training their eye to fine decorative arts with sophisticated pattern combinations and color palettes and classical lines of furniture.

Children are only young once. Every young girl of 8 and up should experience the enchantment of The Couture Doll Bed because their dreams and memories will last a lifetime.

The bed is completely designed and handcrafted to last many years and is destined to be a timeless heirloom. The bed is American in charm and enchantment, American in quality and detail, and American in its original design, U.S. Patent D557,353.