Consider the sink. Although the average American spends 8,505 hours of his or her lifetime in front of the bathroom sink, only a few of those hours are spent in actual contemplation of the sink itself and its influences on our concepts of cleanliness and status.
Almost no one considers the sink`s importance to society, to history
(even the decline and fall of the Roman empire), to literature.
The lowly sink actually serves as a romantic catalyst for the heroine in at least one novel, ``A Mixture of Frailties,`` by Canadian novelist Robertson Davies.
For wealthy Victorians it was a status symbol. Those lucky enough to afford plumbing displayed their pipes proudly. Over time the sink and its metal appendages faded into a mask of middle-class invisibility. In the `80s, the new sinks are showing off again. Today`s status-conscious creations strut their looks in malachite, amethyst, 24-karat gold and crystal.
But all of this is getting ahead of our story.
The fixture has long and distinguished history. The sink dates to the glory days of the Roman aqueducts, when the upper classes enjoyed such modern conveniences as indoor running water, marble baths and sinks that were remarkably similar in design to those we use today.
``Sinks in Pompeii were square, with a hole in the middle through which the water ran out,`` says Ross Edman, assistant professor of the history of art and architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Alas, the capable plumbers who gave ancient Rome its water system inadvertently led to the empire`s ruin. Water in Rome was distributed around the city via a system of lead pipes. Over time, the water running through the aging pipes became contaminated, causing widespread lead poisoning that has been blamed for the eventual downfall of Roman civilization.
When Rome declined, the sink sank also, leaving in its place only the outdoor pump. ``Those who could afford it had pitchers,`` Edman notes. ``But a lot of people didn`t wash very much. Part of it was that there was no running water, and that meant that if you wanted to wash, the water was either going to be cold or you had to haul it and heat it. And if you lived in one room, often with animals, the fact that you smelled didn`t matter very much.``
The concept of cleanliness didn`t really begin to return until the 10th Century, Edman says. ``Monasteries began to put in place elaborate sanitation systems, because they realized the problems of so many people living together.`` Monasteries commonly used the laver, a form of sink that consisted of a circular stone basin with jets of running water like a fountain for communal ablutions, Edman says.
Five centuries later, when the upper classes began washing their hands again, they adopted the term laver to describe their own individual water sources. ``In the upper-class house, there was a niche in the wall where they kept a free-standing basin and some sort of container for water,`` Edman says. The water container, called the laver, usually was ``a bronze container which hung on a hook, so you could pour the water over your hand. It also could be heated in the fireplace. It looked like a teakettle with no top on it.``
During the 15th Century, the laver and basin usually were made of bronze or brass, with the very rich occasionally indulging in gold or silver, Edman says. From the 16th Century through the 18th Century, expensive porcelain basins and pitchers also came into use.
Around 1740, the niche in the wall began to be replaced by the washstand, a small table designed to hold the basin and pitcher, Edman says.
These new pieces of furniture were introduced at the time Chippendale became influential, so many of them were done in the Chippendale style, decorated with carved leaves and flowers or, in the case of Chinese Chippendale, carved latticework.
With the rise of Sheraton and Hepplewhite styles, the designs became simpler, often including a cutout in which the basin could rest, sometimes hidden from view, Edman says. Some Sheraton-style washstands also boasted the first splash guards, lengths of cloth hung from hooks to protect the wall from splashes. Those early guards later were replaced by wooden splash boards.
At the beginning of the 19th Century, furniture designers began to realize that wood probably was not the best material for a washstand. Marble- topped washstands began to appear in the mid-Victorian era, with tile splash panels coming into use in the 1860s. They soon were followed by molded ceramic or porcelain sinks with attached splashboards of the same material.