Glass Bath For Status

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31407, 28 June 1967, Page 2

Glass Bath For Status

(By

CAROLE LYDERS)

LONDON. A new status symbol has just been launched on the London scene. It is the bonded glass bath, which makes the porcelain model as outmoded as Dior’s 1947 New Look.

The man behind the idea is a Mayfair decorator, Mr Godfrey Bonsack, who hopes to make the glass bath as important to the British as it was to the ancient Romans.

The process used to produce these baths and other fittings is such that a customer—if he has the money—can have a bath in any shape and material he likes (even gold dust). Liquid glass reinforced with fibre glass is bonded to both sides of a decorative material and then moulded into a variety of shapes, light weight and indestructible. Mr Bonsack is making seven shapes at the,moment. These include one shaped like an armchair at one end and another round as the moon. For decoration he uses printed silks and cottons, copper and gold dust, silver leaf, and stencilled or hand painted designs. If a customer wants a design of shepherds, or basketwork, or a galaxy of stars, he can have that too.

There are matching showers, bidets, and basins for the “total look" in a bathroom.

Prices range from £BO to £250 for the bath with gold dust in its make-up.

Mr Bonsack feels that the bathroom has been the Cinderella of the house for too long. A bathroom should be both comfortable and efficient, he says. “This is where you start the day and it should help

you to start the day well,” he said recently. Mr Bonsack is a man who does more than practise what he preaches. He spends hours in his bathroom. “I have a telephone in mine. I like to ring up friends while I’m relaxing. It is so pretty 1 spend hours there.” He believes that every bathroom should be warm to prevent condensation which in turn takes away the need for tiles which he considers Victorian.

“The right kind of mirrors are important. There should be pictures and shelves for plants,” he said. Children’s needs are not overlooked. Mr Bonsack said that as children usually find the basin too high, it should be mounted on a floor-to-ceiling tube so it can be adjusted to suit the individual child. Water would come in at a pre-arranged temperature through a flexible cable. Lavatories 12 inches high instead of the normal 16 or 17 inches will be on sale in London in a few days. These new designs are based on recommendations in a report on bathrooms from Cornell' University. The report took seven years to compile.