Magnificent Baths by Massimo Listri

Review copies of upcoming Spring book releases are starting to arrive, and one that has caught my attention is Magnificent Baths: Private Indulgences from Baroque to Minimalist by Massimo Listri. (Rizzoli, 2012.) I've long been a fan of Listri's gorgeous interior photography, so it was a nice treat for me to see a book devoted solely to his photographs of baths. These aren't ordinary bathrooms, mind you, but ones that are, as the title says, magnificent. The kind of baths about which many of us can only dream.

While the book is comprised of a mix of traditional and contemporary baths, it's the old and old-looking baths that appeal to me most. Hyper contemporary bathrooms don't do a thing for me, but if you like them, you'll find those as well in this book. The book's text is minimal, but that doesn't detract from the book as it's really about the photos, and beautiful ones at that.

Take a look below at some of the baths that caught my eye. If you're a fan of Listri or if you simply love to look at photos of stunning baths, then you should consider adding this book to your library.




Photographer Massimo Listri's bath in Florence, Italy.




Sammezzano Castle, Regello, Italy.




Caserta Palace, Naples, Italy.





Château du Champ-de-Bataille, Normandy, France.




Castello di Scerpena, Manciano, Italy.




Royal Suite Bath at Florence's Four Seasons Hotel, designed by Pierre-Yves Rochon.




A bath in the London home of designer Anouska Hempel.




Casa Parodi-Amirfeiz, Genoa.


All photos from Magnificent Baths: Private Indulgences from Baroque to Minimalist by Massimo Listri; Massimo Listri, photographer; Rizzoli publishers, 2012. Photos used with express permission from the publisher.

Just What the Doctor Ordered

Who knew that it would be so easy to fall in love with a medicine cabinet? Truly, I think this is the most stylish one I've ever seen, but I guess that's no surprise as it's in the bathroom of Thomas O'Brien. It's like the hit parade of everything I love- nickel frame, lights on the side, and in the words of O'Brien, it's reminiscent of "a vitrine from a 1930s store". Well, you know that the 1930s reference just sealed the deal for me.

And then take a look inside the cabinet. It's like a mini-Zitomer or something. O'Brien collects fragrances, so there are numerous fragrance flaçons and bottles. I believe I spy some Acqua di Parma as well as Kiehls. It's really making me rethink my 1960s medicine cabinets which are accessorized with Crest, Sure, and Bausch & Lomb-not so peak of chic. I think that I might need to upgrade my sundries.

For a little more in the way of swell bathrooms, I'm including images from O'Brien's soon to be released American Modern. Sure these rooms might look modern, but I'd also add that they're timeless too.




Yet another enviable medicine cabinet. I like how clean the bathroom looks, and I'm not just talking about the decor. Light and white always looks germ free to me. The sink and bath hardware are part of O'Brien's Aero collection for Waterworks.


In the same house, the man's bath features a washstand with tall nickel feet- such a clever detail.


Another shot of O'Brien's bathroom. OK, so maybe I now want a blue bathroom rather than white. The walls are dark blue ceramic tile, and the sink is the same type of marble used in the Empire State Building: Breccia Antica.

(Image at top plus O'Brien's quote from House Beautiful, April 2010; other images from American Modern, Laura Resen photographer)

And The After

Yesterday I showed you the before photos of my guest bathroom. It was an ugly mess, I admit. I decided to challenge myself to see if I could do a few cosmetic things to make the bathroom look better without having to embark on a redo.

I chose to paint my walls a dark shade of navy blue in order to create a jewel box-like effect. I figured dark walls might draw people's eyes away from the ugly bits. The walls are now Benjamin Moore Soot in semi-gloss, and the trim and door are painted Ben Moore's Gentleman's Gray in high-gloss. (A hopeful name...do you think it will send any gentlemen my way?) After I stripped the walls of the bad wallpaper, I found that my walls were not in great shape. I blamed previous workmen, but I'm starting to believe that I'm the culprit. A set of early 18th c. prints were hung to hide the wall's flaws.


Soot on the left and Gentleman's Gray on the right

What made things easy was that I chose to treat my guest bathroom as a powder room instead. I didn't have to worry about the shower as no one would be using it. (That's the beauty of living in a building with guest suites; you can put guests there rather than having them stay with you.) So, I chose to hide the shower behind some greek key curtains in navy and cream from Pottery Barn.

In order to hide the vanity, I whipped up a tailored skirt using Stitch Witchery. I went with a pale blue cotton/linen fabric from Lewis and Sheron, and hot glued some tape trim at the top. It's kind of a pain when you need to get underneath the sink as you have to flip the bottom of the skirt up over the sink, but hey, I'm not down there very often.


Lighting became a bit of a problem, especially as the dark walls made everything, well, dark. I put two column lamps on the vanity to help with lighting and to help distract from the medicine cabinet behind. I had to go with off-white shades, something which I normally don't use, in order to maximize the light. That said, I like to use only the lamps for lighting in there to keep things a little moody, a little dramatic. The medicine cabinet actually came in handy- it gave me a place to shove the lamp cords.

I really got stumped about what to do with the hideous fluorescent light fixture above the mirror. With the help of my sister the artist, we came up with a wooden valance to hide said fixture. The design was inspired by a bedspread from a 1940s bedroom. The nice thing is that you can still use that light, but it's been toned down considerably.





Now maybe I'm kidding myself, but I do think that with the dark colors, the pattern, and the lamps, you don't notice the bad stuff quite as much as before. I think that there is enough there to catch one's eye, perhaps even preventing them from paying attention to the vanity or the mirrored thingamajig. And I was amazed at how little I actually spent on the whole thing. My goal had been to create a temporary fix for the guest bathroom to buy me about a year until I was ready to forge ahead with a renovation. Now, I'm actually liking the powder room and may not even bother with redoing it. If only someone could help me come up with a solution for the french fry lamp in my ceiling.

The Before...

Late last summer as I moved into my condo, I had big plans for a major overhaul of the place. After all, much of it hadn't been touched since 1968. (Had the building been built in the 1920s or 30s, I wouldn't dare think of redoing anything. Alas, it wasn't, and late 1960s decor just doesn't do it for me.) I started with things like having the popcorn ceilings scraped (such a mess), staining the parquet floors ebony, and having the walls painted and papered. Oh, and having the pea green shag carpet in my bedroom AND bathroom promptly removed (yes, it even went around the toilet- Yuck!). What really bothered me, though, were the 1960s bathrooms. My guest bathroom had the worst toilet you've ever seen. It sat about a foot and a half off of the ground, and it had the original plastic toilet seat, which, by the way, had a cigarette burn mark in it. I care not to think about how that happened.

I was trying to decide how I wanted to renovate the bathroom when the economic hell broke loose, and then I lost the nerve to do anything. On top of that, I was tired of having workmen in my home. So, I left it alone for a while, nasty toilet and all. But a few months ago, I realized that it really wasn't necessary to rip everything out and start anew. I could tart the room up and try to disguise some of the questionable decorating choices that were made forty years ago. So let me give you a lay of the land...

This is the way the bathroom looked when I first visited the condo over a year ago. I guess I should clarify something- somebody did make a few upgrades to the bathroom at some point. So it was a blend of 1968 and 1998.


I know what you're looking at. It's the nasty toilet with the discolored toilet seat. The vanity with the chic woodgrain laminate doors is original. Note how the counter top extended all the way over to the shower door. The ceramic tile floor and shower walls are a later addition, as is the green tiled shower floor and the cheapo sliding glass door. See the handle bars all over the place? There was no way you could slip and fall because no matter where you were, there was always a handle to grab.


The walls were papered in a red vinyl wallpaper that was trying to be marbleized. I stripped the paper off of the walls myself, which just about caused me to lose my mind, not to mention my back and arms. You should have seen the pastel paper that was behind the top layer. The weirdest thing about the bathroom is that mirrored medicine cabinet that extends across the entire wall. The doors slide back and forth. Also, in typical 1968 fashion, there is a commercial fixture over the mirror. There had been a big, long plastic box that fit over the bulbs, but I sent that packing.


The vanity has Kohler fixtures which aren't the worst things I've ever seen, but they're far from great looking. Here, you can see the nice, new, and CLEAN Kohler toilet that I had installed. I had to have my contractor cut off that ledge that extended over the toilet; otherwise, no toilet would have fit because of the height issue.

My dilemma was that if I ripped out that light fixture, the mirror had to go to. And if the mirror went, so did the medicine cabinet. I wasn't upset about that prospect. But if I ripped out the vanity, then walls would have to be redone, and I would have to put in a new floor. At that point, I might as well have renovated everything, which defeated the purpose of my project. So, I left the vanity, the mirror, the shower, the floor, the medicine cabinet, and that awful light intact. Tomorrow, I'll show you the after pictures.