Water And Stone Bathroom Sinks
Water is the softest thing, yet it can penetrate mountains and earth. This shows clearly the principle of softness overcoming hardness.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Some time ago, a friend of mine asked me to design a number of hand thrown bathroom sinks for the bathroom and the two children’s rooms in her new home.
Her son and daughter chose their own colour of the glazes for the two sinks in their rooms, and for the bathroom my friend wanted two large sinks in a square shape, which was an attractive challenge for me as a wheel thrower. The potter’s wheel can also be used to make square and oval shapes by slowly and carefully moulding the desired shape after throwing by pulling and pressing while the pot is still wet.
I chose a very coarse clay in both light and dark colours, which contains a lot of so-called chamotte stones. As coarse-grained as it is, this clay is not really suitable for working on the potter’s wheel as it chafes the hands over time. However, once the bowl has been thrown, the outside of the sink can be beautifully completed when dry by washing out the clay with a wet sponge, which brings out the coarse-grained structure of the clay and creates a very attractive surface texture reminiscent of the rough structure of a stone.
