2010 July
History of Natural Stone in Bathrooms
A Roman Bath
Natural Stone has been used in 'bathrooms' since the first 'bathroom' was created. I say this loosely as we are talking more along the lines of a caveman using a chiselled out rock as a place to pool water rather than an actual room with fittings and appliances. Century old beings and tribes will have been using natural materials way before the use of clay and certainly long, long before we started making any bathroom furniture out of porcelain and plastics.
The early Roman and Greek bathrooms were normally constructed from limestone and other stone and then tiled. Sanitary ware made use of lead piping etc to enable filling and drainage.
Natural stone has forever been seen in bathrooms however; due to the advancements in technology we can now make other materials much more efficiently, cleanly and for less cost. Bathroom furniture and appliances are often factory made on a production line and simply cast from moulds, this is very efficient and normally has a low error rate, but can all be a bit to soulless and dull.
A Natural Stone Bath
Natural stone is a beautiful material that cannot be manipulated so easily and therefore is normally hand crafted and individually finished. This offers more character for your bathroom rather than making it look like every other wash room or a standard black and white hotel design.
Hopefully we will be seeing the use of natural materials in bathrooms for many years to come.
History of the Sauna – Tribes to Finland
A painting of an early sauna
The original saunas were little more than holes in the ground, covered by any kind of material that came to hand. These were normally very large and big enough to house whole tribes of people. They were intended to keep people warm during harsh winters.
Small fires were made in middle of these holes and large rocks were heated by the flames. Water was then poured over the rocks to produce steam and warm the users, who would normally remove their clothes after warming up to feel the steam heat their skin.
The word 'Sauna' is of Finnish origin. More sophisticated saunas came into being in 19th century Finland, until that time saunas were always in a separate structure outside the home.
Before the 16th century, Finnish bathing habits went virtually unrecorded. During the middle Ages, sweat bathing was popular throughout Europe. The Finnish sauna's profile began to grow when the Reformation made the European bath house almost extinct.
The sauna later also became a method of bathing and people would wash and cleanse themselves in the steam.
In industrial times, as concrete replaced wood, more heat was required to heat a sauna. As a result, many public saunas built at the turn of the 20th century were more like steam baths than saunas. By the 1930s, poor construction and resulting disinterest brought the sauna's popularity to an historic low.
Ironically, the explosion of World War II halted this declining trend. Food became scarce, theatres and other forms of entertainment closed and life became bleak. Sauna was one of the few pastimes people could enjoy. The military found the sauna essential. They used tents with special sauna heating units as means of delousing the soldiers and boosting morale. Often a sauna left by an evacuated villager was repaired and heated by the freezing troops.
Now however, most people use a sauna to cleanse the body of toxins and relax in the heat. Although the Finnish still have some crazy rituals including going straight from a hot sauna for a plunge in a frozen lake!
NS 22002 Natural Stone Tray
Sleek, stylish design with a flat, sleek surface. Springwave’s modern stone shower trays will complement your bathroom.
This shower tray is minimalist, plain and simple. It sits well in any bathroom and almost seems like a piece of well crafted art rather than a place to stand in the shower. The slightly sunken water catchment area and a beautifully finished chrome plug cover is all it needs to complete the look.
Available in a number of colours and sizes.
DIMENSIONS: 900MM × 900MM × 50MM
History of Bathroom Furniture
The idea of a room in a home dedicated to personal hygiene and grooming is, strictly speaking, a recent one. For the most part, houses built before the turn of the century didn’t have bathrooms. So, in the span of about 100 years, the modern bathroom has evolved from a novelty into an almost universal residential fixture.
Greek Outdoor Toilets
Prior to this the majority of toilet, bathing and sauna facilities were either outdoors or public/shared and short of somewhere to leave the 'communal sponge' or the odd urn! Bathroom furniture is a relatively new concept.
The closest thing we can see to this is the use of towel rails in Roman baths. The Victorians first made connections between the improper disposal of waste and disease and this is the time when bathrooms began to become more developed than just 'holes in the ground'.
Modern bathrooms have expanded on the Roman idea of very basic toilets with simple towel hooks. The modern bathroom includes shelving units and housing racks, designed to store away or keep to hand those vital bathroom items that we rely on for everyday cleanliness such as shampoos, towels, soap and toilet roll and alike.
History of Showers – Origins
Primitive Showering
Over the last 50 years, showers have become more popular than having a bath. Showers are more time effective, consume less water and are more hygienic as we are not sitting in our dirty water for 30 odd minutes!
So where did the concept of a shower really come from? People had been bathing in seas, lakes and rivers since the dawn of time and it is speculated that the first showers were indeed taken under waterfalls. People realised the downward pressure of the water would help them clean, and it was far easier than washing in say a basin where fresh/waste water had to be transported manually.
The first group of people to have showers that would be recognizable to a modern person were the ancient Greeks. Their aqueducts and sewage systems made of lead pipes allowed water to be pumped both into and out of large communal shower rooms. These rooms have been discovered at the site of the city Pergamum and can also be found represented in pottery of the era. The depictions are very similar to modern locker room shower, and even included bars to hang up clothing.
There is also evidence of the Greeks having servants pour buckets of cold water on the bather as they scrubbed themselves clean.
The Romans later followed suit. Their famous bathhouses can be found all around the Mediterranean and spread across the empire as far as England. The Romans believed in bathing multiple times a week for hygiene and health benefits, if not every day.
Archaeology shows the Ancient Egyptians had a shower room that was very similar to the Ancient Greeks', where slaves poured vases of cold water over the bather's body.
Over the coming posts we will look into how these old methods and techniques that have lead to the development of the showers we know and use today.