Love that bathroom,” said interior designer Shelly Handman when he was asked about the Checker Cab-style bath he concocted for clients Theodore and Estelle Kassel.
”These were people coming from a very traditional home, and Estelle really wanted to update herself. She said, `I`m tired of having all these dark woods around me. I want something with kick and snap. Sophisticated, but not New York. Laid back.` ”
Handman, the director of design for Arlene Semel & Associates, already had filled the Kassels` Lake Shore Drive condominium with white sofas, black Italian-looking lights and custom cabinetry covered in elegant beige marble. The bathrooms, however fantastic, had to tie into that color scheme.
Into Theodore Kassel`s little bathroom, then, went the black and white. Because the colors were so stark, it took only a few choice pieces and patterns–the checkerboard design, the Lightolier lights and the drumlike metal sink by the West German company Alape Design Works–to make it work.
”She constantly surprised me,” Handman said of Estelle Kassel. ”I never thought she`d approve that sink.”
Beige, in a veritable river of travertine marble, flowed into the larger bathroom and rose in steps to the deep whirlpool tub. ”She wanted something to have an elegance but toned down–a casual elegance,” the designer said.
”She loves stone, she loves marbles and granites, and the most casual of those is travertine.”
So far there`s no bath mat on the floor, although Handman and the Kassels are hunting for a tiny Oriental rug. Doesn`t the marble get cold on the feet? ”Oh, yes,” Handman said, shuddering, ”but it`s delicious.”
