Livinghouse

We’ve come across many different types of baths in our time including one shaped like a stiletto heeled shoe and another slung from wall to wall like a hammock. We even reported on a life-size one made completely of chocolate although of course if you added hot water to it, it would melt. But impressive nevertheless.

Another one, started as an art project in 2008, is a bath made completely of books. We know that many of you enjoy taking a good book or e-reader into the bath with you to relax with a good story but we’ve never heard of bathing in knowledge literally surrounded by books before!

The bath of books

The artist is Vanessa Mancini. She cut each book individually and fitted them together like a jigsaw attaching them to a metal bath tub/frame. This stood on four antique lion claw feet in the style of old Victorian baths.

Vanessa’s intention was to cover the books with resin so that it would become functional. As you can see from the pictures she had already set up the bath filler. While this art project was never intended for mass production. it’s unfortunate that the resin layer was never added and so no one has been able to immerse themselves in water and knowledge at the same time even for a show.

Cleansing the mind as well as the body

The concept was supposed to ‘cleanse – purifying and cleaning -the mind of bombardment by the media’ by soaking in this bath. Now the experience is purely metaphorical. Technically one could still sit or lay in the bath and ‘soak’ in the surrounding knowledge but there seems to be no suggestion of where one can do this.

Now it would seem that you will have to make do with an ordinary bath and take ‘the knowledge’ in with you with in book or e-reader form. Of course there is no shortage of choice when it comes to reading materials to relax with.