CHAPTER XXXIV
BEAUTY AND THE BATH
Probably no development of the home has mirrored human accomplishment to such an extent as has the bathroom. We have prided ourselves on our sanitary bathrooms; on the devices for comfort and idyllic perfection in this, the smallest, yet the most important room in the home. We have developed it to such a point that in new homes everyone has a bathroom to himself with comfortable additions to fit the individual whim.
For a few decades this room has been a replica of hospital efficiency and that has sufficed. But to-day, the artist in home-making is bringing the bath room back to the luxury and ease seen in the boudoirs of ancient days, the days from which we take our beautiful drawing rooms, chambers and general schemes of decoration.
This reversion toward bathroom luxury has come about because the ordinary bathroom has been too cold. It lacked warmth, well-being and coziness. Then, too, bathrooms are always the smallest rooms in the home, and for that reason can be more easily dressed in glorious sheen and kept in harmony with the color scheme and general plan of the home.
A FRENCH BATH
A few years ago no one would have thought of having wood panels in the bathroom--we proudly felt that we had gone beyond that stage. Yet to-day in the elaborate combined dressing-bathrooms we find white wood panels giving a feeling of warmth, together with almost as rich an effect as when marble itself is used.
The French bathroom in one great house is as carefully designed as any room in the house, even more so, for there both utility and beauty are achieved together. Take, for example, the closet seat which looks like a comfortable chair with cane back and seat. The seat of course, is hinged to raise up and down. Here an ugly necessity is beautifully camouflaged to fit in with the entire scheme of the dressing room, and it gives no jar to the inhabitant who must, forsooth, spend many hours of careful toilet making in this superb room. The fixtures here are gold of lovely design, the woodwork in keeping. The floor is of large tile and spread with rugs to add warmth and the room is lit, not only by the regular bathroom fixtures, but also by a crystal center chandelier.
Some bathrooms even have a corner for the bathtub which transforms it into a chaise longue.
In modern bathrooms in luxurious homes we have a reincarnation of the art of Benvenuto Cellini in the gold wrought metal work. This is made to harmonize with the general style of the room in which it is placed, and, though expensive, it is easy to take care of. Besides, when you are really making a bathroom, what does it matter if it goes into the thousands when other rooms go into tens of thousands?
Usually only one or two bathrooms--the master’s and the mistress’s--reach this height of gorgeousness. The others, however, conform pretty well to the highly convenient and thoroughly delightful rooms in the rest of the house.
THE EQUIPMENT
An interesting development, too, is the shape of the bathroom--the departure from the rectangular. Sometimes it is octagonal, with a radiating tiled floor and the various functioning fixtures in the far sectors. One room which we have investigated has in one corner a sunken marble tub and in the center the radiator. The gold work in this room is beautiful, but practical, of a design that takes plumbing into the arts.
The thoroughly equipped woman’s bathroom must have the usual tub, showers, lavatory, watercloset seat, a closet or two in the walls, a table, towel rack, brackets for soap and sponge, hooks for hanging things, scales, rugs, a chair or stool, toilet paper receptacle, mirrors and tiling for floors and wall.
In the men’s bathrooms is added the bidet, sometimes a shaving chair and other shaving necessities such as a special lamp for fine work. To both these rooms can be added various things, more or less necessary according to different people’s taste, such as the sitz bath, which is luxurious for bathing the feet after a hard walk or a game of golf.
This article in no way intends to be a plumbing article. All it means to do is tell you what there is new in the development of the bathroom and leave the choice to you. See