Design Tuesday: A Hang Your Hat Challenge
In the Spring of 2004 I was getting pretty pregnant. At that you aren't telling yet but everyone knows stage we took our escape. 17 days in Paris. It was lovely. A wonderful pre-parenting present that has coloured our whole outlook.
But I exaggerate.
Anyway, there is a quality to that trip that we have tried to hang on to, the L'Occitane soaps, the lentils du puy, even the Historical loo. One of our guidebooks directed us to a Historical Loo near Place Vendôme. My husband, the inveterate world-wide loo photographer (I know you know these people), and I made haste to this most pressing of Parisienne landmarks.
It was remarkable, and amusing. The snaps were taken and little was it thought of again, except to ask every other person we knew who visited Paris if they had been. They hadn't, scoff, losers. Probably skipped Chez Janou as well, da fools.
When it came time for me to finish designing the last of our three bathrooms in the renos it all came back to me. I wanted to make this, our main floor powder room, kind of opulent. Hell, I thought... I'll make it historic. Where are those holiday snaps??
From these I set off to compose the necessary component for our own Paris, 1905 inspired WC. Nice wood, pretty ceramic tile of great taste, mosaic floor, stone, stained glass tones.
So how did it turn out??
Our contractors did an especially beautiful job of the wainscot. They copied the detailing on each panel exactly to my Paris pics. I do love those guys.
And, now for this episode of design tuesday, audience participation! For really no functional reason I installed a chrome and porcelain hook near the door. The room is so cubicle like it seemed appropos to me at the time. See me waving?
I keep thinking I have to find a great hat to hang there. What say ye? Ladies evening hat? Fedora? Maybe something straw and suitable for Giverny? Too much?
Labels: renovating
posted by mo-wo at 9:26 p.m.
6 Comments:
your bathroom is so nice i want to pee.
i wish my whole house looked vaguely like the Art Nouveau relics of Paris, to be honest. :)
Definitely not too much to have a hat. It would be, if you excuse the pun, an excellent capper.
It's beautiful!
I do admire classy loos. Gorgeous job.
& I like the hook bare but then I think we have different design sensibilities, you & me.
I'll crap in that!
I think I took pictures of almost every crapper I used in Paris except this kind of East German plastic pod crapper with the automatic doors and the self-cleaning aerosol operation which I found (gratefully) on our first morning in Paris. It was perched curbside down by the Institute du monde arabe. Maybe it is still there or maybe it has wheels and a city worker has driven it to a new site where greater tourist crap-urgency has been recorded. It cost me .40 euro. The best $8 I ever spent.
A hat, perhaps, but I think not straw. Too country.
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