“Born Again”

One of my favorite bloggers/designers, Cheryl Kees Clendenon, recently did a powder room bath which had a lot of unique problems, mostly revolving around its small footprint and cathedral ceilings. The finished result was stunning (here’s a link to it), but I bring that up because what Cheryl did was seek out products that were not the same as what one normally associates with a bathroom. I say normally associates, assuming that the readers of this blog site are people looking to remodel their bathrooms, a course they have decided upon because they are tired of what they now have. But once you decide that what you have no longer suits you, the problem then becomes, what are you going to do with this space?

One of the outlets I find myself particularly liking is W.S. Bath Collections in Pennsylvania for a number of reasons. The first, for those of my readers who have import anxieties, is that they are located here in the USA, which means that that particular bugaboo can be safely laid to rest. But I do have to point out that, more and more, I see that problem just kind of fading to black. I can “visit” Europe anytime I like with a couple clicks of the mouse, and once one sees the many product design ideas they have, it just seems inevitable that those products will make their way to the USA. But I really started to talk about a company with cutting-edge products that already is in this country, so let’s do that.

What W.S. Bath Collections has done is set themselves up as an import company, which means that many of the cutting-edge Italian designs that make my heart go pitter-patter are easily available in this country. And this means, in turn, that when I talk about the designs in this blog, I am talking about products that are actually available world-wide, because those in Europe can simply go to the Italian sources, right? A little something for everybody-I like it when it works out that way!

But what I like about W.S. Bath Collections is their eye for the innovative and unusual and unique and different-how many ways can we say that? But a bathroom, especially one as small as mine or the one Cheryl remodeled, really needs something consciously apart if it is to get anywhere near the word “wow.” And that brings us to the W.S. Bath items I chose for today’s blog.

Given the room for it, wouldn’t you just kill for something as innovative as the Riva Art Basin Faucet that tops this blog? About the only downside I can see for it is the water bill you’d have if you entertain a lot, especially if you have friends like me, because I’m the kind of guy who would be in the bathroom half an hour playing with that faucet, trying to figure out (1) how it works and (2) how in the world anyone was ever able to come up with a design like this one.

The other thing I like about W.S. Bath Collections is the fact that they are so sell-named. They really do have collections of products for the bath, many of which are imported from Europe, all of which are definite mind blowers. And that’s the best part about remodeling a bathroom, I think, blowing people’s minds when they see the finished results. With just a little imagination, you can make it so much more than a simple remodeling; you can make it a renaissance.

Joseph

“It’s Not Your Papa’s Floor Anymore”

One of the things that interests me about countertops is the wide multitude of materials that can be used for them. I remember years ago when I was an Army cook in Berlin (OK, OK, decades ago-never mind how many!) and got a crash course in different countertop materials. I was transferred there from a post in West Germany, and I was appalled when I saw the steel countertops I would have to use. At that time I thought that the only acceptable countertop was a butcher block, but what I found was that I could get along just fine with a chopping block for the kind of things that needed to be done that way.

If you learn to cook by simply plopping down a head of lettuce on a countertop and going to work on it, having to switch over to a chopping block is something of a jolt. But, interestingly enough, from that day to this, that is how I have worked, excepting only the year or so I spent in restaurant kitchens. But for home use, it has always been a countertop made of material that necessitated the use of a chopping block of some sort for salads or cutting up meat for stews and the like. But once you get used to that sort of thing the actual material used for countertops can take on many dimensions.

In recent years one of the more innovative countertops has been concrete, which is a bit startling to an old codger like myself, but it is, as it turns out, a most plastic medium, in that it can be shaped, colored, and formed in an absolutely astonishing number of ways. I bring that up because I recently came across Concrete Detail, a New England-based company that specializes in countertops. What I find myself liking about their designs is the simplicity with which they have approached this ancient medium. The coolest thing about concrete these days is the many things that can be done with it, but that can be a seductive trap. The object, as I see it, is to design a countertop that is a focal point, without overpowering the kitchen.

Really, what should guide the design of the countertop of is the environment in which the finished product will sit. I bring that up because Concrete Detail has made countertops with that marvelous colored concrete and embedded glass, which is just a stunning concept. But they also know when to say when. Sometimes all a kitchen really needs is a simple countertop with a solid color to make a pleasing contrast with lighter-colored cabinets.

Another countertop I found myself particularly admiring was made with a soft gray/green they call “Sage.” They chose it because it complemented the existing cabinets, which had been handmade of cherry and had aged to that glorious patina that gives cherry its character-when you can keep it away from the Big Plant Manufacturers who insist on staining it to ensure “homogeneity,” thereby robbing it of all that makes cherry such a wondrous wood. To dress up this particular countertop, though, Concrete Detail used a series of back-painted, glass, mosaic tiles in a foursquare pattern that was embedded in three different locations. Each of the tiles they used was a different color, suggested by the slate backsplash tiles they used. It’s a design that is both simple and stunning.

I also like what they have done with an integrated farmhouse sink, which is pretty slick because you don’t often see a farmhouse sink that is integrated into the countertop, as opposed to a drop-in sink. And the splash of color they use from time to time in their designs is really just skilled artisans taking advantage of one of concrete’s primary advantages, which is that you can do anything you want to do with it.

My father worked in construction a lot as a young man, and really could have hired himself out as a general contractor, had he been so inclined. Back in the 1950s he made and installed a Formica countertop with a stainless steel double sink for our kitchen, not seeing, as indeed no one did then, other materials beneath his feet that could have been put to the same use. I remember watching him when he built out the basement in that house and expanded what was really just a crawl space to a complete, finished basement for our growing family. It had a bedroom, laundry room, and workshop for the Old Man. One of the thrills (hey, this was pre-almost-any-other-kind-of-entertainment days!) was when the concrete truck came to our house and they pumped concrete into the basement which my father then troweled himself. Whoever would have thought that same material would one day be used for absolutely glorious countertops?

Joseph

“Not of this World”

My father was an absolute wizard with wallpaper. He never really went bonkers with it, but most of the houses he lived in had one wall that he decorated with wallpaper, so it became a design focal point, as opposed to simply blanketing a home with wallpaper. He sometimes confined it within wood borders, and always he seamed it perfectly. The other thing I found particularly formidable was the absolute ease with which he installed it. I first saw him wallpaper a wall in our Helena, Montana home in the 1950s, and although I was a small boy at the time, it was clear to me that the Old Man had done this many times before.

For my own self, I could never really get my arms around the idea of wallpaper, both because of the perceived difficulty of installing it-knowing I would inevitably want to work to the Old Man’s standards-and because of the difficulty of cleaning it, because face it, there comes a time when one cleans it or paints over it. Well now, by gosh, someone has come up with a new type of wallpaper altogether, one that avoids the problems of both installation and cleanup by the simple of expedient of being a product that looks like wallpaper but is, in fact, ceramic tile!

Novoceram is a French firm that has come up with one of the most innovative ideas I have ever seen in tile, and that’s saying a heck of a lot, because, as my constant readers know, tile is one of my dominant interests in life. And I say that, knowing full well that before I began writing these blogs and searching out interesting items on the Internet, tile was something I never really thought about at all. It was always the ceramic stuff one puts at the back of countertops for backsplashes-big whoop. Well, now, I gotta tell you, that perception has most definitely changed!

Novoceram went at this particular project in ways that just blow my mind. I won’t presume to speak for them, to say which came first, the method or the inspiration, but what they did was create a way to mimic the look and feel of wallpaper. What they specifically wanted to do was to reproduce the floral detail and silky softness of Eighteenth Century hand-painted Chinese wallpaper. If you explore their website, you will soon come across a poem written by a Chinese poet who lived from 701 to 762 A.D. Li Bai is renowned for his imagery, and we can certainly see why in the poem they quoted:

“When I wake up I open my eyes:

“A bird is singing amidst the flowers;

“I ask him at what point in the year we are.

“He answers: at the point where the breath of spring makes the birds sing.”

Inspired by that poem, Novoceram created the charm of the wallpaper that Eighteenth Century Chinese might have used to illustrate this scene, depicting branches, blooms and birds in a soft, almost other-worldly setting. The ceramic tiles they used for this are huge, as much as 53″ by 70″, and they have been laid out in such a way that it is actually possible to arrange them in a number of different patterns, allowing the end user to make a design all his own. It’s the sort of thing that one can use on a short wall, or as a focal panel in a larger wall, or even as a design that takes up an entire large wall, as it is possible to repeat the design across the wall, just as one would do with wallpaper. All these years later I still remember the green ivy on white bricks wallpaper that covered one wall in our Helena dining room. As a kid I spent hours examining the perfection of the Old Man’s seams.

The other thing about these tiles, as I said at the onset, is the fact that they look like what they are not, like wallpaper. Because it is such perfection, I have mostly used pictures of their Florilege line with the flowers and birds, but with European artisans, it always seems to be first a design, then endless variations on that design. Another design for the Novoceram’s wallpaper-like tile is Tresjouy, which is made with a thin gold liseret over a tile made to give the effect of the original canvas fabric that would have been used in this design by Eighteenth Century artisans. We show it here as backdrop to a pool; and with that amount of water and humidity, no one with a brain that works would want to use the wallpaper this tile so closely resembles.

It’s a product and a concept that can be used almost anywhere, and one so stunningly original that it really is difficult to talk about it without gushing. Perhaps the best way to sum up Novoceram’s accomplishment is to simply quote another poem from Li Bai:

“You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;

“I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.

“As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown,

“I have a world apart that is not among men.”

Joseph