Brilliant Bathrooms

Lizzy Epstein

09/01/2005

Stone Faced
Tucson, Ariz., Designer Lori Carroll was given one objective when designing the look and feel of her client’s bathroom: Create a breathtaking and memorable space. A veteran interior designer with 20 years of experience under her belt, Carroll designed a powder room that not only looks grand, but also can be appreciated for its tactile elements. “When you’re in the space, you just want to touch the walls and experience the whole room,” she says.

She turned to the indigenous Arizona landscape for inspiration, incorporating elements that are found in the desert. “I wanted it to be very natural,” she says, adding, “I just thought, what would be more interesting than covering the whole wall in stone?”

Left: Wall sconces by Luna Negra provide a warm and inviting source of light. 
Middle: Artist Rudy Hodgers of Luna Negra forged the sink base and mirror out of copper and steel. Right: Glass shelves bearing flowers soften the severity of the custom stonework blanketing the bathroom’s walls. Photography by William Lesch. (Click image to enlarge.)

After Carroll and her clients met to source stones for the project, she decided to use two different shapes for the room. She lined the walls and the floors of the bathroom with a 2-by-2-inch tumbled rustic yellow slate and a 6-by-12-inch quartzite, both of which had to be custom cut. She then incorporated metal accents and glass shelving into the wall, as “a way of parting the elements,” she explains. “It’s not like you’re looking at more stone. It’s more soft.”

Carroll also called upon the talents of Luna Negra’s Rudy Hodgers, a local artist and craftsman with whom she has been collaborating for the past 10 years, to create a custom base for the washstand, mirror and wall sconces out of copper and steel. Robert Jones Design in Seattle made the stunning sink, using handblown glass inlaid with rust-colored threads. “It’s just so gorgeous,” says Carroll. “It’s like a set of diamond earrings.”

Lori Carroll & Associates, 520.886.3443, www.loricarroll.com


Fire Starter
Interior Designer David Stimmel achieved the perfect marriage of form and function in the master bathroom of a family’s Pennsylvania home. There, he was faced with the unique challenge of blending style with climate control. The previous bathroom “was really inefficient,” explains Stimmel, a former hockey player. “It was so cold in there that ice crystals would form on the windows.” He solved these conundrums by incorporating various heat sources within the rustic aesthetics of the room. “They wanted a garden oasis feeling of being on vacation in France, so we wanted to give them that château feeling,” he says.

Stimmel lined the floors with India slate and used Oceanside Palladium blue tile. He incorporated radiant heat underneath the floors and into the walls of the shower. “In the winter, it’s very luxurious,” says the designer. “When you step on the floor, it feels like stepping on a sandy beach.”


Left: India slate floors and hand-hewed wooden beams salvaged from a barn in Maine frame the master suite. Middle: A Heat & Glo gas fireplace also functions as a room divider. Right: Black absolute granite beveled countertops encircle a stainless steel sink. Photography by Charles Meacham. (Click image to enlarge.)

Stimmel solved his clients’ temperature troubles by adding a working gas fireplace by Heat & Glo, which ultimately became the focal point of the room. He then tied in the French countryside motif by building an oversize mantelpiece with commanding hand-hewn pre-1800s wooden beams that Stimmel salvaged from a barn in Maine. He used the same wood to create the vaulted ceilings. The fireplace serves double duty as a room divider. The open master suite consists of two primary spaces: the bedroom and the bath, connected by a round turret-shaped foyer. “When you lie on the bed and you look at the fireplace, you see the cut glass,” says Stimmel. “You don’t see the vanity, the sinks and the faucets.” Accents such as a double-sided mirror that hangs from the ceiling with a “cool old twine and leather lariat” complete the rustic theme.

Stimmel Consulting Group, 215.542.0772, www.stimmeldesign.com

Divine Inspiration
When the owners of a private estate in New Jersey gave husband and wife interior design team Tarik and Nayana Currimbhoy carte blanche to design the bathroom adjacent to their dining room, the result was the creation of a space fit for a god. Inspired by the Bodhi Tree, the plant beneath which the Buddha purportedly sat the night he attained enlightenment, the Currimbhoys fabricated the Tree of Life, a 12-foot-wide partition that serves as an entryway into the bathroom. The imposing divider was hand-carved from beige limestone in two pieces and was then installed as one entity.

The Tree of Life, a hand-carved beige limestone partition custom-made for the Eastern-inspired room.  Photography by Ruggero Vanni. (Click image to enlarge.)

“The beauty of stone is that it lives very long,” says Tarik. “It’s been there since civilization was born. When it is hand-chiseled it talks to you; the weight of the stone really comes across.”

The design duo—who operate an architecture and design office in New York and a workshop in Rajasthan, India—used limestone for its alchemical properties, further enhancing the religious motif of the piece. “The beauty of the limestone is that when it is wet, it looks gold,” says Tarik. “So when you are washing your face in the sink, and water splashes onto the limestone, it turns to gold.”

The bathroom’s sink was made using hand-cut crystal manufactured by Nevobad. The antique silver faucets are from Sherle Wagner.  Photography by Ruggero Vanni. (Click image to enlarge.)

The rest of the bathroom was also elevated to the realm of the divine. The walls and floors were crafted in hand-chiseled beige marble. The Currimbhoys also incorporated a custom Nevobad hand-cut crystal sink accented with silver antique faucets from Sherle Wagner.

“Normally, you hide a bathroom,” says Tarik. “This design celebrates the bathroom, and it becomes something sacred.”

Currimbhoy Design, 212.228.8396, www.sanastone.com