Turkish Bathroom

I am aware that my castle chapel is supposed to include many religious ideas, but it doesn’t include any Islamic motifs. I wanted to balance this by creating a bathroom in a Turkish style - a ‘Turkish Bath’ room - cleanliness is, as they say, next to godliness. Victorians often fancifully used Islamic tiling (eg, Leighton House), so I knew it were possible that a room in my castle could had been decorated in this way in the nineteenth century, but not necessarily in a genuine Islamic way. 

I bought some postcards from the Victoria & Albert Museum of some blue and white Iznik tiles there, and ever since wanted to include them in the castle. On a trip to the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, I bought another postcard of more Iznik tiles that seemed to fit in style and colour. I then found a plastic bath bought as part of a beauty regime kit, which I decided to paint copper with gold legs to match the orange of the Pergamon tiles. You can see the V&A tiles on the upper level of the back wall, and the Pergamon tiles forming an oriental half-onion on the wall above them.

These elements inspired a long search online for all things Iznik, and a visual trawl through Moroccan palaces, and Turkish mosques, in order to find ideas for the rest of the room. I wanted the sink to be based on a Moorish fountain. I wanted ottoman tables, rugs and cushions, and hanging lamps, so that the cool glistening of the blue-white tiles would contrast with deeply coloured rich fabrics.

Eventually I chose to divide the space into two rooms, firstly a more Moroccan themed windowed atrium with cushions and octagonal tables, and beyond that the bathroom room itself with my original postcards of Iznik tiles making it more Turkish. The dividing wall would form a screen with two spiralled plant stands from the Dollshouse Emporium incorporated as pillars. 

After much debating with myself about which tiles I liked best, I eventually scaled down and printed the images and stuck them to the walls, pillars and floors.

The blank walls and ceiling I decided to plaster with polyfilla before painting, so that they have a more genuine Mediterranean texture than paint alone would provide. This however proved tricky, as the room’s dividing wall was a structure I had cut out from corrugated cardboard and foam (so as to be lighter than wood), and I had to cover that in glue before the ‘plaster’ would stick, and add glue to the plaster mix too. Flattening it to a smooth surface was also a challenge; I found that doing two layers helped: the first layer I roughly smoothed with a small flat plastering tool; when this was dry, I applied the second thinner layer and smoothed it down with a damp sponge before it dried. 

I inserted the lid of a cotton bud tub into the ceiling, painted gold with acrylics, just to add a bit of simple decorative variation. I made the Moroccan style lamps out of beads with grain of wheat bulbs threaded inside. 

Now I know what you’re thinking: you have a bath an a fountain for a sink, but where’s the TOILET?! Well, I hope to disguise that under the cushion-bestrewn ottoman in the first room...