![]() The solid porcelain tub scratched many itches. Because the tubs were both fragile and heavy, they were iffy for export, but the idea found a market on English shores, and by the 1890s, solid porcelain tubs were being fired up by manufacturers like Trenton Potteries.Īn ordinary-style tub-sloped at the head, flat and plumbed at the foot-was the most common, and affordable, early porcelain model. In the 1850s, British artisans cracked the tub-coating code by taking a different tack: all-ceramic tubs with a glazed surface. Though cast iron sinks were porcelain enameled, iron bathtubs were a far more complex shape, and when filled with hot water, they could expand more than the coating, risking delamination. Read more:Ī china-like glaze seemed to be the ideal, obvious solution, but producing a vitreous skin on an object the scale of a tub was not so simple. Iron and steel, of course, rusted eventually, even under the most meticulous coat of paint. Copper and zinc discolored readily around water and soap, and the seams of sheet metal were hard to keep clean at all. However, the big catch with all of these conveniences was corrosion. ![]() Mott Iron Works was finding a ferrous niche in the bathtub market as well. This wood-encased period galvanized tin tub is in Astoria, Oregon’s 1885 Flavel House museum.Ĭast iron-the all-purpose material of the Victorian era-had been poured into sinks and lavatories since the late 1850s, and by 1867 the famous J.L. Though copper was still used for wood-enclosed tubs as late as the 1910s, it more commonly appeared as a liner for steel-cased tubs, rimmed in oak or cherry, that stood on bronzed iron legs. However, for decades, the bathtub most Americans knew best was the one available in a 1909 hardware catalog: a tinware plunge bath with wood-covered bottom painted in Japan green (a type of pre-1940 enamel paint).Īs running water became more common in the latter 19th century, bathtubs became more prevalent and less portable. The Mosely Folding Bath Tub pulled down like a Murphy bed. Later, there were ingenious (though ultimately impractical) hideaway alternatives, like the portable canvas tub (similar to a pot-bellied cot), or the Mosely folding bath tub-an armoire-like contraption with a hinged door that pulled down like a Murphy bed to reveal a bathing saucer. In progressive houses equipped with early water-heating devices, a large bathtub might be site-made of sheet lead and anchored in a coffin-like wooden box. The typical mid-19th-century bathtub was a product of the tinsmith’s craft, a shell of sheet copper or zinc. Antebellum Scrubsīefore indoor plumbing, bathtubs-like chamber pots and washbowls-were moveable accessories: large but relatively light containers that bathers pulled out of storage for temporary use. What is true is that no accessory embodies the metamorphosis of bathing equipment (from moveable furniture to plumbed-in-place fixtures) or helps define the use and look of a bathroom in any era as much as the bathtub. Mencken, the newspaperman who concocted this hoax as an uplifting wartime news story, would agree. It would be nice if such a mercurial vessel had so neat a beginning-even H.L. Search the web, and you’re sure to read that America’s first bathtub was installed in 1842-December 20, to be exact. Tiled-in bathtubs, like the marble-topped example in this sunny restored bathroom, evolved to make cleaning easier by eliminating dust bunnies hiding beneath raised clawfoot tubs.
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