Waterworks: Inventing Bath Style - Hardcover

Sallick, Barbara; Light, Lisa

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 060960421X ISBN 13: 9780609604212

Publisher: Clarkson Potter, 2001

Synopsis

The perfect bathroom is a stylish, inviting space that is both functional and appealing. It is a place of tranquillity, refreshment, and renewal -- a refuge from the busy world.

Waterworks: Inventing Bath Style offers all the inspiration and practical advice needed to create this perfect bathroom, no matter what the budget or space.

Drawing upon more than twenty years of experience in bath design, author Barbara Sallick explores the essential requirements of every bathroom -- its fixtures, fittings, and surfaces -- and provides hands-on advice in selecting tile;  placing fixtures; introducing lighting; choosing faucets; finding storage space; working with ceramic, stone, glass, metal, and mosaic; adding accessories; and creating a beautiful space that meets your needs. Stunning color photographs showcase a number of exquisite bathrooms that range in style from romantic to streamlined,
utilitarian to indulgent.

Waterworks: Inventing Bath Style explains and celebrates the simple luxuries of a well-designed bathroom, from the floor on up. Filled with tips for working successfully with designers, architects, and suppliers, this invaluable guide ensures that a new or renovated bathroom adds comfort, style, and value to any home.

About this title

Review

Waterworks is not a guide for the do-it-yourselfer. Rather, Waterworks is a love letter to what is presumably the author's favorite room--a justification of that peculiar but widespread obsession that provokes the purchase of fancy lotions and potions, rich terry-cloth towels, and scented candles, and that stimulates dreams of oversized bathtubs and vintage-tile back splashes. According to Barbara Sallick, the mechanics of the bathroom are best left in the hands of experienced contractors--and, herself a professional bath designer and supplier, that approach is only to be expected. In no other room in the house, to be sure, is one in such close physical contact with permanent, immovable, functional fixtures and fittings: sink (called lavatory here), toilet (water closet), and bath (well, just bath). While those elements must be chosen with great care by the people who are to use them every day, they must be installed flawlessly, and professionals are the ones to do that.

Sallick's book won't help you lay out a bathroom floor plan, install a shower, or choose tiles (though her brief glossary of terms provides the language one might need in order to communicate with a subcontractor). It will, however, help you figure out exactly what you want, organizing those grandiose dreams into something a contractor will understand. Here are some things you'll want, after reading the Waterworks bath supplier co-owner's book: handcrafted (most definitely handcrafted) faucet handles, an antique enameled medicine cabinet, creamy bone hair comb and blond-wood shaving brush, glass canisters for cotton balls and swabs, marble and lots of it, exposed plumbing under a vintage lavatory basin, and perhaps a towel warmer. The bathrooms featured here, whether that be the large ones or the small, glorious, luxurious, or austere, are not for the faint of budget. --Liana Fredley

About the Author

BARBARA SALLICK is cofounder and vice president of design for Waterworks. She and her husband, Robert, launched Waterworks in I978 and recently celebrated the company's twentieth anniversary as the leading resource for bathroom fixtures, fittings, and accessories in the United States.

LISA LIGHT writes about interior design, architecture, and the applied arts. In 1996, she coauthored Zona Home: Essential Designs for Living. She has also published a book of poetry, The Pavement Laughing. She lives in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: Clarkson Potter
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 060960421X
• ISBN 13: 9780609604212
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192