Roman Style Bathtubs

Lovers of Italian art and design choose to live with Roman style freestanding marble bathtubs.

Two antique lovers – one in Argentina and another in Nashville – created amazingly elegant bathrooms with freestanding marble bathtubs as the focal point. These are actually copies of ancient metal tubs that included rings for portability. These tubs weight thousands of pounds and require special installation equipment, an opening large enough to pass through, and — since they are natural stone — careful handling.

An Argentine collector located a tub [top] that had arrived in his country long ago and staged an extremely spacious, formal bath around it. This bath puts the room in bathroom. Getting into the tub might be a bit of a balancing act for someone who didn’t excel at running the high hurdles in high school but perhaps a step stool for assistance is kept out of sight. Still, a tub like this definitely qualifies as sculpture for the bath. Placing it on an old marble floor makes both the tub and the bathroom double-droolworthy in my book.

As I was enjoying the first tub, I came upon a virtual twin that Nashville designer Mary Spalding installed in her own home after living in Italy. To point up the tub she created stunning marble slabs with curved tops to function as wall panels then installed his-and-hers Kohler wooden console sinks against them. Tub and sink faucets are by Dornbracht.

While these two well-aged bathing beauties would likely bust most bathtub budgets, it’s interesting to learn that I could quickly locate a contemporary Roman-style marble tub copy, one that weighs in at 1700 pounds. Considering the price of some marble sinks and other bathtubs it seems like a relative buy at $3150. As anyone who has fallen for a fabulous tub knows, they can be wicked expensive.

(Source: Veranda, World of Interiors)

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