Clawfoot bathtubs

When you are a little girl and you see all of those beautiful things in catalogues, you wow and coo, and think "yes, that's what I'll be having in MY home", as you sit there, leafing through page after page with excitement as you dream of your future house. You look around you, and you wonder why your parents don't have so and so, etc. It is when you get older, of course, that you understand about money, and not just that - but the upheaval of having your house smashed to bits with hammers to be rebuilt again, and that life is not always so simple as pointing something out in a book and saying "I'll have that one" like you're ordering a drink.

I have always dreamed of having a clawfoot bathtub. My new house purchase, as lovely as it is, unsurprisingly does not have one - it is a 1950's ex council property. My bathroom is not gruesome by any means, and is looking better by the day under my care. In fact, I have a very sweet 80's/90's "shell" bathroom suite in white, which fits in well with my vintage decor. I cannot afford a new bathtub, nor can I afford the mess it would bring to my life. So when I saw the following sign, my purchase number two this week, bought in Skipton for £4, I thought it would add the touch of clawfoot tub glamour I seek for my bathroom:


A "Bathroom Rules" sign, shaped like a clawfoot tub

Bathing was once a great luxury, and clawfoot tubs were considered to be the height of luxury in the late 19th century, having being regarded as the ultimate staple of Victorian bathroom styling. The Victorians certainly enjoyed their privacy - some of the baths had shower enclosures and rounded hoods with shower rings and curtains - and, indeed, their luxury - the bathtubs came in different shapes, including the double ended slipper bath, which peaked at both ends for maximum comfort when having a soak. The clawfoot was large enough for a tall man to comfortably lie down in, and also for the servants, who were not only involved in the laboursome filling of the tub with water, but who also need to manoeuvre within the tub in order to to wash their masters - a futher denotation of how these items were luxury items for the rich.

It therefore comes as no shock to hear that when the extremely roomy clawfoot was originally developed in the late 1800's, by a combination of ideas from the J.L. Mott Iron Works Company and the Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company (now known as American Standard)/the Kohler company, who both between them developed a process of enamelling the exteriors and interiors of the cast iron so that the paint would not peel off the sides, the tubs had initially been used to bathe livestock. Kohler’s first clawfoot tub was advertised as a “horse trough/hog scalder, when furnished with four legs will serve as a bathtub.” The surface provided was one which was easy to clean and, because of this, the tubs rapidly grew in popularity for use in a domestic setting, making bathing popular once again. Prior to the 1800's bathing had actually fallen out of fashion and, until the installation of underground sewage systems in European cities in the early 19th century, people used perfume upon their clothes and bodies rather than bathe.


A Victorian bathroom illustration J.L. Mott Iron Works in 1899, courtesy of vintageplumbing.com

As the popularity of clawfoot bathtubs grew, their designs became more intricate. As well as having the three major different styles (roll top, slipper and doubled ended slipper), the ornate inspiration for the feet is typically Victorian, as ball and claw feet were used in much furniture at the time. The ball and claw foot design was developed in Holland in the early 1700's, and grew from bring a Chinese dragon grasping a pearl, to the common motif we know today across the world, with the lion paw and ball being more popular here in England, where the eagle claw and ball is a more popular image in the US. Regarding the clawfoot tub, the legs do vary according to design, the most known being the traditional clawfoot, pawfoot, cannonball and armada, as illustrated below:


The four major clawfoot tub foot styles, the comparison picture created by https://houseappeal.wordpress.com/

From an item which has gone from bathing cattle, to the epitome of Victorian bathroom fashion, to having its feet confiscated in recent times of war, their metal being used to create weapons, bullets and other war supplies (many antique bathtubs have since been restored with replica feet that match the original design of the tub), to then being replaced almost completely during the Art Deco era by the easier to clean "pedestal tub" and the built-in, double-walled single bathtub created in 1911...


An Art Deco "Pedestal" style bathtub, available to buy at http://www.signaturehardware.com


An example of a built-in Edwardian bathtub from Lord Bute's bathroom located in the Bute Tower, Cardiff Castle from www.hevac-heritage.org

... the clawfoot tub is now making the comeback that it so rightly deserves. Its effortlessly elegant design has taken on a "timeless classic" status, both in our hearts, and in our bathrooms. And though I may not currently be able to afford one, they are finally an item which can be afforded by the everyday Joe, and not a luxury item purely for the higher classes anymore. Not only are there many styles of feet as shown above, the colour combinations and materials are no longer restricted to white enamel/porcelain. The possibilities are now endless, and attainable, due to the new acrylic material used to create modern clawfoot tubs. Relax and unwind as I leave you, soaking in the following beautiful examples from http://www.signaturehardware.com









All photographs belong to their respective owners with the exception of those of my own house and rooms/items therein. I make no claim to own pictures used for illustrative purposes. Please contact me should there be any issue with pictures used/credits attributed to pictures used.