Everything in the kitchen sink
I’ve been looking at sinks, for a possible kitchen makeover. I’m thinking a butler’s sink, subway tiles and brass taps with the pipe-work showing. Scullery-chic is the idea. But today I’m featuring some far more mainstream sink stylings. The book Something Like A Nest by Andy Sewell looks at typical scenes of middle class British life, and a lot of them include sinks. The images are so familiar, with almost all of them including a fancy potted plant and a bottle of Carex anti-bacterial hand wash. The views out over back garden or fields is also key, suggesting the sink as a space of contemplation rather than outright drudgery.
‘Kitchen Sink’, of course, has come to be shorthand for a certain kind of film, novel and painting made around the 1950s in Britain. The films – A Taste Of Honey, Saturday Night & Sunday Morning – were groundbreaking in showing the reality of working class life, and an emphasis on the domestic. But I didn’t know, until I just googled it, that the term actually originated from the paintings of John Bratby, a painter who art the start of the 1950s was creating expressionistic scenes of the home.
(c) BRIDGEMAN; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation
His kitchen sink paintings seem to be defined by claustrophobia and chaos. Perhaps it is the arrival of dishwashers in many UK homes in the decades since that have changed the tone of kitchen sink art into something more wistful and contemplative. Your thoughts engraved on a dishwasher tablet please…
I love the Victorian sinks, they are just perfect!!
Lowri
lol, are you sure the book wasn’t sponsored by Carex?
Re kitchen sinks just wanted to say DONT get a white or ceramic sink! I had one in the previous kitchen and hated it, it marks sooo easily, tea stains it terribly, it is very unforgiving – so many things broken while washing up in it : (
thanks Maria – I agree. I had an enamelled sink before – reclaimed – and it did stain and I broke so many cups I had to put a plastic bowl inside it. But, damn, they look so good…
On the subject of sinks! I LOVE my huge old fashioned double Butler’s sink – agree it does stain with tea bags etc but if you fill it up and leave to soak with a very weak bleach & hot water solution it looks like new. Agree also it is unforgiving on your best china cups but I found some transparent plastic ‘sink mats’ online to line the base which aren’t too hideous & avoids a washing up bowl , plus my sink is always full of teenager’s mugs awaiting the house elf to load the DW ( again) . Had a big stainless steel Butler’s sink in the last house ( not a cheap one either! Grrrr) & it gave a loud cracking noise every time it filled with hot water, made me jump . Love ceramic! X
Great suggestion with the plastic mat, thanks. I do find it tends to be the male contributors to the house who like to drop cups into sinks from a great height, or leaving stuff ‘to soak’. Thanks for your comment