Damiani Bathroom Vanities
19 October 2009
“Dam Fine Designs”
I know I’ve really hit the bathroom vanity idea recently, but I kept coming upon ideas that I found rather intriguing. And in this case I found some people who really like to use nice joinery, which just warms the cockles of my little woodworker’s heart.
The Dam bathroom vanity system has a lot to recommend it, starting and ending, I think, with its simplicity-and its complexity. Because it’s made by the Damiani Company of Italy, my first thought was that “Dam” was just an abbreviation for the company name. Actually, as they point out on their website, it is more a takeoff on the English word “dam,” as in a dam across a river. They go on to point out that this, in turn, helps them keep in their own minds the concepts of “traditional activity,” especially as these have manifested themselves in the use of natural materials like wood and stone. Just the other day there was an item in our local newspaper about a dam here in San Die
go that had been built by Spanish missionaries and local Indian labor, which I bring up because there is something in the wonderful grace of what’s left of that ancient dam that seems to reveal itself in the stone and wood that Damiani has melded in their Dam bathroom vanity system.
So much of our world is filled with ersatz products that are made to look like what they most definitely are not, usually something of quality, that I find it most exhilarating to come across a line of vanities in which all of the pieces that look like they’re wood really are solid wood. The dovetails don’t show up well on the small pictures I’m obliged to use on this site, but they’re there, and in this instance, they’re much more than the “pretty face” they essentially are in kitchen drawers. Here sliding dovetails are used to hold these pieces together as opposed to the-in this day and age-usual staple. They have also planned expansion spaces to allow the solid wood to settle in with time,
The other pleasing element of these designs is that they are a wondrous union of both the old and the new. The old shows up in their careful attention to detail, the choice of materials and the joinery I have already mentioned. The new is the modular systems they’ve created for this line. The Dam bathroom vanity system is available in one of three combinations of wood and stone: beech and Botticino, oak and Persian black stone, walnut and Etna lava stone. They also come in a number of sizes and configurations that enable them to be used in just about any size bathroom. They can even be converted to use as a kitchen sink! I love puns too much to pass up my title for this blog, but Damiani has much to be proud of with this line. They really are wonderful designs, make that Dam fine designs!
Joseph
Leave a Reply
One Response to “Damiani Bathroom Vanities”
October 19th, 2009 at 6:51 PM
Yeah, last week I could have told you all about the “dam” bathroom countertops. We had some granite for a vanity crack right in half across the sink opening. The granite guy kept muttering about how we should have gone with a vessel sink and I kept talking about the deal I got on the Kohler drop in sinks I got on close-out. There were three of us in the bathroom when the granite cracked and all of a sudden everyone was fluent in French.
These vanities are okay, but I prefer the Kudeta vanities.
Joe