Grunge may be taking its final curtain call on the fashion stage, but in interiors it looks set for a Lloyd Webberian run. Crumbling plaster, specially-aged paintwork, furniture made from recycled scrap iron and antique baths continue to fill the pages of interiors magazines. Only the rich can afford to look so poor.
Finding an antique bath may not be an easy task. The local Steptoe might be helpful, but failing that, try an architectural salvage merchant. With the trend well established, prices are high, but you won’t have to take the dead rats out of the bottom. Some have splendid marble baths which can be lined with a linen sheet – but the kids will have to stop using Super-Matey as marble is porous and will turn blue.
The London Architectural Salvage and Supply Company sold four porcelain baths recently taken from the Czech Legation. Porcelain is not affected by acid, very useful when dissolving dissidents, and a fabulous conversation point.
Samantha von Daniken and Justin Homewood at the Water Monopoly have been in business for eight years and have a client list Hello! would envy. Prices range from pounds 1,000 to pounds 20,000 plus VAT for baths with names like An Earthly Paradise and Garden of Eden. Most are totally functional – subtract a style point for this – and their 19th century hood baths have a series of taps producing a normal shower, needle spray and douche from above and sitz spray or wave at will. Some of their stock comes from old asylums where these accessories facilitated the bathing of the less co-operative inmates.
Among the Water Monopoly’s most sought after baths are those with illustrious pedigree; they currently have one that belonged to Edward VII. A great bather, he once said had he not been a prince he would have liked to have been a plumber.
All baths are fully restored and the Water Monopoly will advise on fitting, sending somebody to site if necessary. Many are leaving for the homes of well-scrubbed trendies in Switzerland, Germany and the United States who want to be cool and clean. The Americans have few antique baths of their own; while Britain was celebrating the Great Exhibition in 1851 the puritanical republic was chastising its premier citizen for installing his own in the White House.
You will need to turn over a good-sized double bedroom to some of the larger pieces but a French copper or sitz-bath should fit in a bedsit. If the past has a message for the future, B&Q should be doing a coal-fired zinc version by 2001
