| This book, by Munroe Blair, is called Bathroom Ceramics and deals with the history of pottery baths, bidets and washbasins.
In the twenty-first century most civilized communities enjoyed washing water "on tap" as the expected norm. This book traces the history of bathrooms and describes the development of ceramic fixtures for bathing and washing.
Simple wash bowls have been made for many centuries by potters to satisfy their local communities. In this first century of the third millennium, the ceramic washbasins we are accustomed to are only a little over a hundred years old. Staffordshire U.K. potters started making washing and toilet bowls, together with other domestic pottery in the late eighteenth century. By the 1850s, demand for ceramic bathroom fixtures had increased in volume, size and complexity of patterns. Simple bowls were extended to include integral shelf space with soap trays, tap holes, overflows and upstands around the bowls. Changing styles of design and decoration are followed through Classical, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, self colored ware, the Victorian revival and into the twenty-first century. This progression is illustrated with colorful catalog pages, diagrammatic drawings, photographs of historic baths, bidets and washbasins and archive pictures showing production environments of early the early twentieth century.
Munroe Blair acquired his knowledge of bathroom ceramics from inside the ceramics industry, working with porcelain manufacturers Twyford, Armitage Shanks and English China Clays. |
