A bathroom vanity can be 100 percent utilitarian — a simple box supporting a sink and enclosing space below that can be used for storage.
Or, it can be something else entirely.
Here are two quite different but equally engaging approaches that raise the humble bathroom vanity to a higher level. The work of Naomi Neilson Howard marries modern convenience to craft traditions that are hundreds of years old while showcasing a creative reuse of materials. By contrast, George Moussa’s work reflects his unusual background — he’s a lifelong resident of Dallas who grew up immersed in European culture.
Howard founded Native Trails in 1997, but her focus on sustaining native crafts began when she was studying abroad in the early 1990s and learned that the Moroccan artisans who made her favorite jewelry used techniques that were handed down through generations. Even more compelling, their jewelry making was a way of life that was rapidly disappearing because the artisans lacked marketing know-how.
Returning to the United States with a cause, Howard met another group of artisans who faced a similar problem — Central Mexican coppersmiths who made hand-tempered water pots using methods that predate Spanish colonization. She worked with them to adapt their craft to products that Americans would buy and then she began to market them in this country.
Howard’s first venture was rounded and oval-shaped vanity sinks, an easy segue from the copper water pots. Since then, she has worked with these same artisans to move beyond their traditional shapes and produce sinks with squared corners and folded edges.
Seeking inventive ways to market the sinks, Howard began making vanity bases, tapping into another long-standing, artisanal tradition — wine making. On the central coast of California where her company is located, vintners add flavor to their wines by submerging oak planks or “staves” in the huge stainless steel tanks that hold the fermenting liquid. After nine months, the wine is ready for bottling and the oak staves, which are covered with crystallized sugars, are routinely incinerated.
Where others saw trash, Howard saw interesting possibilities. She cleaned and dried the staves, an arduous task that most people thought not worth the effort, and then used them to make vanities. Her “Cabernet” model has a red tint; the “Chardonnay” is gray. The obvious next step was salvaging the oak barrels that are also used in wine making, which are usually pitched after five years. Although the “Bordeaux Wall Mount” looks like a cask that was simply sawn in half, Howard said the barrel is disassembled and the boards are cleaned and dried before they are made into a vanity.
Howard’s latest foray in vanity design has been the use of renewable materials and bamboo. Collaborating with Chinese artisans, she has created a product that is as much art as it is functional. The pieces have sustainability cred — they combine newly harvested bamboo, a renewable plant material that reaches maturity in about seven years — with recycled stranded bamboo made from bamboo milling wastes. But their most striking characteristic is their sculptural shape — the curved “Amelie” resembles a gymnast making a back bend, and the polyurethane finish feels like silk to the touch.
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