BATHROOM SINKS
18 August 2008
“Snow Without Footprints”
OK, the first thing I want to point out, since this is not a picture of the wife’s bra, is that it is also not a picture of my bathroom. Nor did I take the picture. Nor do I know where it came from—picture or bra! It is simply something that caught my eye, purely because of the design possibilities raised by the sink itself.
Actually, when you look at it objectively, it is easy to see why the manufacturers decided to pose a picture like this one, not because sex sells so much, but simply because the sink itself has a sensuousness of line about it that lends itself to this kind of treatment.
Growing up in Montana one of my favorite things to do was walk in the backyard after a fresh snowfall. It was a very small yard, and in the summer months, I doubt that there was a single inch of it that wasn’t well-trampled by me and my four siblings. But whenever you were the first to walk on it after a snowfall, you always felt like you were the first person who had ever been back there.
It gave one a terrific sense of wonder, and it is something I have always looked for in my own designs, but whenever I design, I encounter limitations. The first is my own imagination (or lack of one!) of course, but always and forever, the one constant limitation is the fact that everything I make is functional—so it has to do its job, and I find it difficult, at times, to get around the limitation of a purely functional piece that is, somehow, altogether different from what has gone before. And that, in a nutshell, is why I have featured so many European designs on this website—because of their innovation. Ardino, which describes their work as “Italian style—made in Germany” is very much a case in point.
Really, you should be browsing through their website. I downloaded considerably more pictures than I can use in this blog because their site is so rich with, paradoxically, designs that are so simple.
Many of their designs are in white porcelain, but they’ve transformed that most common sink material into something altogether different with their curves and their designs and the way they all but hide how water escapes from the basin. And then just to make people like yours truly feel a bit more insecure, they’ve actually found a way to light the Dimara (it’s the rectangular sink) from within in a range of vibrant colors.
But what they have mostly done, to my mind, is to walk on snow that has no footprints. Feeling like I was the first person to ever walk in the back yard after a fresh snowfall was largely an illusion because others had already been there. In Europe, though, they have taken on the impossible—finding new designs in the prosaic. And succeeded, damn them, and succeeded.
Joseph
One Response to “BATHROOM SINKS”
August 19th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Those are some incredible sinks! It wouldn’t quite work in my place, but they certainly are some interesting designs.
Joe