Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1894 — A Modern Bath-Room. [ARTICLE]

A Modern Bath-Room.

Harper s Bazar. A recent description of a bathroom in a grand American house shows how people of taste transform rooms devoted to the humblest uses into bowers of beauty. The floor is paved with mosaic, and there is no tub, the bath beinj» simply a sunken space about three feet in depth in one corner. This is walled with marble, railed with bronze, and marble steps lead to it. The walls are covered with ten-inch-square tiles, painted by an American artist with a design of waves, fishes, and other objects suggestive of the sea, and above this a frieze, a trellis wreathed with vines. In many houses the bath-room is too often regarded entirely from a utilitarian point of view; and while it is true that absolute cleanliness and hygienic plumbing are the chief considerations, beauty should also be aimed at here as in any other room of the house. The plumbing should be arranged after the approved modern methods in which all the pipes are exposed, and the bath if possible should be of porcelain, which in the end is cheaper than the metal ones. The floor, if tiling is too expensive should be of parquetry or stained wood, with only one long rug, which may be easily taken up at the weekly cleaning, and glazed tile paper, which comes in many pretty, Resigns should cover the walls. It is well to have the wall below the cornice divided into two portions the upper covered with tile paper, and the lower painted with soapstone finish, whicl is entirely waterproof. and may, like the paper, be washed off with a sponge. Jean Ingelow spends a great pars of the year in the south of France, wb?re she has a cottage.