Plumb good
Now I’ve started, here is a little more plumbing from Bath. Literal plumbing, since plumbers were originally those who worked with lead (Latin plumbum). Those with sharp eyes will spot that this is a branch of W H Smith’s. Smith’s went in for rather beautifully designed stores in the 1920s – the shop fronts often featured stone, rich oak finishes, windows with small panes, and, sometimes, beautiful tiles. Here, though, it was the down-pipe and associated plumbing that caught my eye.
You quite often get the date embossed in rainwater fittings like this, perhaps mainly because it’s not difficult to do, lead being a soft metal that takes this sort of decoration and information with ease. But the openwork ‘WHS’ monogram is a special treat here, as are the scallop shells, the kind of thing that on a medieval building would symbolize a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Why are they here, on a 1920s shop front? Maybe it’s enough that they look right.
Look at the way, too, in which the pipe in recessed into the stonework, so that its outer edge is flush with the wall. This was shop design that was conceived as a whole, and built to last. How refreshing compared to the ephemeral, here today, revamped tomorrow retail design that’s common now. Here’s to the stationers, and their plumbers, and their long view.
6 comments:
How funny to find Art Nouveau detailing of this sophistication on a branch of W H Smiths... though actually Smiths continued an active involvement in the visual arts at least until the 1980s, when I remember the approach to their headquarters being full of sculpture by artists such as Elizabeth Frink. Builders today still talk of calling in "the plumber" to do work in lead, though I'm sure the lead-working plumbers and the bathroom plumbers have almost nothing in common any more.
Cliches perhaps...but such simplicity,beauty and utility...truly a joy.
Thud: All very true.
Neil: Another use of this word, I think. When I was an undergraduate my college had a strange kind of communal bathroom in a basement under a Victorian extension and this dreaded place was known as 'the plumber' (or maybe it was 'the Plummer' after its benefactor).
On a New York expedition in 1987, I was knocked out to discover that the W.H.Smith newpaper kiosk on the concourse of Grand Central Station was still as we used to find them on English railway platforms. Metal letters, varnished background, and magazines still displayed by hanging them up on bulldog clips.
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