Underneath the Arches
Lights! Models! Guest list! There’s a clash of fabulous invites but we’ll always have Home House. Bathroom showrooms are the new members’ clubs when it comes to fun times. We’re off to the opening of a door. Albeit a rather fine bathroom cabinet door. This is, after all, C P Hart. And we’re all for doing our bit for the environment. The party is Adventures in the Urban Jungle: The Bathroom Transformed. Very green. Disruptor alert.
The C P Hart showroom is enough to make Flanagan and Allen burst into song: “Underneath the arches | We dream our dreams away | Underneath the arches | On cobblestones we lay.” This cavernous store fills a run rabbit run warren of railway arches south of Waterloo. Oh no, time for another Flanagan and Allen rendition: “Anytime you’re Lambeth way | Any evening, any day | You’ll find us all doin’ the Lambeth walk.”
The brick vaults and hanging lightbulbs are as deconstructed as Kuskus Foods’ root vegetables served in Thurlby Baston baskets. Who needs to dine at The Ritz or The Carlton when you can balance on a bath or sit on a cistern eating Joy of Taste’s crabsticks and caviar? New room set: House of Hackney’s leafy Palmeral wallpaper is the perfect backdrop to designer Christian Sieger’s characterful Dornbracht brassware. The Urban Jungle is all about celebrating light, air and greenery in urban living. Colourful tribalism in; white minimalism out. “Maybe it’s because we’re Londoners…”
