PLumbed Artforms

When Charlotte Corday stormed into Jean Paul Marat's bathroom in 1793, he was in his high, churnlike tub and she stabbed him to the heart. When Siamese soldiers and sailors stormed last week into King Prajadhipok's Bangkok bathroom (see p. 18), made by Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Co., the big U. S. bathtub was empty.

Seriously as well as cynically, some Art critics have called plumbing the only immortal U. S. art-form, the country's sole contribution to world culture. U. S. plumbing annually reaches new esthetic and utilitarian highs. Last week King Prajadhipok missed new plumbing highs in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden. A magenta watercloset built all in one piece of porcelain stood alone on a green throne, simpler than Prajadhipok's. A seven-foot bathtub surnamed the Bourbon Luxury was flooded with soft lighting, framed in banks of peonies, on a marble stage. The National Association of Master Plumbers' annual exposition was definitely art-conscious. The Master Plumbers claimed that their "glorification of the unmentionable" had evolved a "new conception" of the bathroom. The New Bathroom is designed 1) to dress in; 2) to keep clean in; 3) to relax in. It is the cinema bathroom on a small scale. It has a bath-rail beside the tub for books, cigarets and a tea set. It has a vertical handrail to hold onto while one steps into the tub. There is a sun-ray lamp, a pillowed rubber mat on the floor. There are closets with sliding glass doors for towels and clothes. There are shadowless mirrors. The bathroom denizen may stand on a given spot in the floor and see his weight indicated on the wall in front of him. The bathroom, not of porcelain which may crack or "craze," is of rough- surfaced iron, | in. thick, coated with enamel. A color may be baked on: T'ang red, clair de lune blue, Ming green, rose du Barry, orchid de Vincennes, etc., etc.

A "plain" bathroom fixture is hard to get. The three leading manufacturers (Standard Sanitary, Crane, Kohler) now create in five main art periods: i) the heavy "masculine" Renaissance; 2) the light "feminine" periods such as 18th Century, Empire, Directoire; 3) the neoclassic; 4) the Colonial; 5) the modernistic. Standard Sanitary emphasizes the neoclassic; Crane the Renaissance; Kohler the "Metropolitan," a modernistic style which, according to an exposition salesman, "means as much as Standard's neo-classic." But all three master plumbers plumb in all periods.

Little known outside their profession are the master creators of bathroom fixtures. Best known is Standard's George Sakier, a tall, dark, sardonic bachelor with long tapering hands, who was educated to be a mechanical engineer. He creates five new model bathrooms every six months for private exhibition to architects, decorators, plumbers. He designs Fostoria glassware too, invented the square-bottomed glass. He designed King Prajad-hipok's empty neoclassic bathtub.

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