SINKS SINKS SINKS
30 July 2008
“A Sinking Feeling”
Do you know why I write about bathroom sinks so much? No, no, you were going to say it’s because I have a rather limited imagination! Actually, it’s just the opposite of that. I write about them because I do have an imagination, a vision, if you will. And a problem. I have a too-small bathroom that can never be enlarged, and because I want more for that room—and because I’ve shot my mouth off so much with these blogs, I suppose!—I’m on a mission to find a bathroom design that adds not a millimeter to the size of that room, but that gives to it the ethereal quality of the version of Sch
ubert’s Ave Maria I’m listening to as I write these lines. (Oh my word, how can anyone sing with such a crystal-clear tone?)
Now I flatter myself that I can do something slick with the vanity, so that just leaves me with… well, it leaves me with everything else, actually! And no matter what I do with the vanity, it is 37″ wide and 22″ deep, and from that the goal is to create something both different from anything else you may have seen, but that is somehow right as rain. And if you find yourself humming Ave Maria when you see the finished project, then I’ll know that I hit the jackpot!
I bring all that up because it is my quest, my impossible dream, but also, I think the dream of quite a few who are reading these blogs. I am not the only one with a too small bathroom that I would like to make into something elegant, but looking at concepts like the one we featured yesterday is the sort of thing that quickly makes one feel like a motherless child! Beyond the cabinetry—you know I’m going to advocate a custom job!—what most makes a bathroom special is the choice of fixtures. And 
the focal point of any bathroom vanity is its sink, which brings us, at some length, to a company called Native Trails, which, interestingly enough, is located in my own California.
Native Trails has a line of kitchen and bath products, many of which are of hand-hammered copper. They work closely with highly skilled artisans from small villages in Central Mexico to produce many of their products, and those roots show in the finished products. They also use a lot of recycled copper and reclaimed wood in their creations, which will surely please my partner, as he runs a very “green” workshop, but what I most like about the company is their artwork—and I use that word deliberately.
Sinks such as these, hammered not on a pneumatic forge but by hand, carry with them the hands of him who envisioned them and gave them their shape. Art, by definition, cannot be functional, but there are functional pieces that become works of art, simply because of the heart and mind of he who made them. I really feel that way about the art Native Trails is creating. There is something of the Earth about it.
Joseph
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