Got my art nouveau library ready

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Pekka Huhta

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About five years ago I spent some time in Glasgow and fell in love with Charles Rennie Macintosh's designs. They have been an inspiration for a lot of Finnish designers at turn of the century, and I thought I wanted to have a go on art nouveau, with a dash of Finnish design at that time

I have posted two earlier threads about my "library",

my-first-try-on-parquet-flooring-t49326.html
small-bookshelf-wip-t65448.html

The "library" is just a 1,5 m2 toilet under the stairs. It was a very easy project: if I just did not feel like doing anything, I could just shut the door and let the room wait for inspiration. The panelling on the back wall hides a small door to the storage space under the stairs, aka "Librarian's apartment".


I had an old reclaimed mirror, which was far too big for the toilet. I ended up cutting it into pieces and soldering a smaller version together. The tiling behind Lefroy Brooks tap was designed by me: I made a mold for the tiling and a local vitreus tile factory manufactured the two tiles for me.


And naturally you need a bookshelf in the toi... library, how could you live without one.


For the bookshelf I made a tiffany glass door. A slightly crude copy of "Mackintosh rose". That was my first try on glasswork.


As said, the mirror was far too large, but I ended up cutting it to pieces and soldering a smaller version out of it. A sthe mirror had rounded corners, I had to chase a separate copper and brass frame around the mirror. At the same time I ended up making a copper variation of the same Mackintosh rose as on the glass door of the bookcase.


The design of the tile was a tough one. I wanted some art nouveau whiplash curves to it, but they just are such a pain in the buttocks to draw. I hope I got some Art Nouveau felling into it, at least many features of the design are either copied or at least "inspired by" original art nouveau tile designs.

We tend to have a bidet shower head fitted to toilet taps around here, as there seldom is space for a whole bidet. It took some amount of soldering to fit one of those to the Lefroy Brooks tap, but to my surprise everything turned out fine.


There is a "fart fan" on the ceiling, I just had to cover the ugly plastic thingy behind an oak plinth and a chromed valve.


It was a long project, I have drawn the first sketches for it in 2008. At the moment it feels like it really was worth it.

Pekka
 
There's a lot of great work there Pekka and I'm very impressed with the number of techniques you've tried. I love the idea of a library in the toilet, though I'm sure that might be a little too likely to facilitate haemorrhoids!!

I love Mackintosh's School of Art. Did you use their toilets as an inspiration?
 
When I started the background study for designing the toilet, I quickly found out that most of the very few remaining toilets of the art nouveau era (well, roughly 1895-1910 or so) were in fact very plain, just plain white tiling and the seat somewhere in the corner. Or then the whole place could have been tiled from floor to ceiling - with some occassional ornamentation. I wanted only a minimal amount of tiling in there, if only to avoid lousy acoustics in a small room. That's why I wanted to make the toilet look as an ordinary room and bring in some features of a library there.

Perhaps one of the most striking pieces of furniture that inspired me was C.R. Mackintosh's tiled washstand. I thought that it was much more what I was after than a cold, tiled room with a seat in the corner.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1994.120

I think you could spot some similarities. I just have to wait about a hundred years before the patina in my oak furniture is as brilliant as on that one...

What comes to extended reading in that library, you can store plenty of hemorrhoid cream in those small drawers of the bookshelf :wink: :D

I know the design is not to everyone's liking. On the other hand I am more than tired of the plain, white modern design around me and really wanted to make something different. Hopefully it will survive the next person moving in :lol:

Pekka
 
The William morris wallpaper is nice as well
Click to expand...

+1. I think it's well overdue that pattern and decoration make a come back — the whole clean lines, minimalist thing is getting a bit tired and predictable now...
 
I've always liked that style so much so I have just bought a load of morris paper for my hallway and stairs. I'm sure I was born in the wrong decade, I prefer the old stuff but I'm a seventies kid. I'm even tempted to do some old school panelling. It wont match my 3 bed semi but who cares :D
 
Cracking "Throne Room" Pekka it would be a pleasure to spend time in there.


Pete
 
monkeybiter":1aowod24 said:
Interesting that you find the acoustics important in the toilet =D>
Click to expand...

Well, I don't like tiled spaces anyway, but tiling a room that small all over would have made the most modest fart sound like bombing of Berlin. Sometimes you have to think about other people as well :wink:

Pekka
 
Hi Pekka,

I wanted to say thank you for being the inspiration for our hall flooring that I installed in January this year. All reclaimed timber (well nearly all; I was 0.2 m2 short #-o ). But the whole floor cost about £80 including adhesive, varnish etc. SWMBO now wants another in the other hallway. Must invest in one of those festooly things so that I can just lay the floor and then cut the protruding bits for the border rather than lay the border and cut a few hundered bits of wood so they fit!

 
Wow, that's quite a bit more than my 1,5 square meters. I'm really glad if you really got the idea from my flooring. And the pattern is about the same as well.

My floor was in fact free, as I got the glue from a fellow who installs parquet every day. Well, maybe I should count the varnish in, although I already got the tin in my workshop already...

Looks really great, I like the borders around the room. Where did you find the wood?

Pekka
 
You really were at least part of the inspiration when I saw your original post!

A friend moved into a new house last summer and there was a whole load of torn-up flooring left behind the shed in the garden. It had obviously come from old gym hall or school halls as there was still the badminton court tape on a lot of it. It was in bad shape and some of it covered in rat yuck so by the time I sorted through it I had about 7 sq m left. As it had been outside for a while I stickered it in my shed for about 4 months then processed it down to near finished size then brought it into the house for as long as SWMBO would allow (about 3 weeks!) then processed it to final dimensions. As I had three different wood types (I'm guessing meranti, mahogany of some type and then something like walnut or wenge) I looked for different patterns I could do and yours was the most inspirational. It was a lot of work but I think it was worth it.

H.
 
OK, that was much more difficult than what I did. I used longer offcuts that I had from previous woodwork, and I would guess it was much easier to just cut the pieces from clean planks/battens instead of cleaning previously used pieces. So mine was not exactly "reclaimed wood", more like leftovers and scrap.

I'm glad if you liked the pattern, since it took me months to figure out what I liked the most and what would suit the leftover pieces I had available. in the end it was a fight between herringbone and that basket weave pattern-

Pekka
 

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