Memo to Margaret Mead, anthropologist
From Mary Umberger, mere newspaper reporter.
Marge,
Thought of you recently as I spent a couple of afternoons hacking my way through a jungle of convection ovens and shower towers and warming drawers.
I was thinking it was too bad you never got the chance to study a kitchen-and-bath trade show.
Being born in 1901, you came of age in a culture that thought that kitchens and bathrooms and laundry rooms were . . . well, just rooms. Boy, were you born too soon. Too bad you had to go all the way to Samoa in order to make your mark in the world of cultural anthropology, because for three days earlier this month, McCormick Place was a gold mine.
The trade show is properly called the Kitchen/Bath Industry Show, and it’s a huge spread–about 650 exhibits–of every appliance, material and geegaw that designers and manufacturers and retailers could devise for outfitting America’s kitchens and baths. The potential for success here is obvious: The show’s sponsoring organization, the National Kitchen and Bath Association, predicts that Americans will build or remodel 6.5 million kitchens this year; the number swells to 10.6 million for bathrooms.
There are a couple of reasons for these huge numbers–the most obvious being that even with the Nasdaq flopping around like a displaced flounder, there’s an unprecedented amount of affluence out there, and a lot of people can afford to do these projects. The $100,000 kitchen may not have become the norm, but it’s no longer a rarity, either. Besides, our housing stock, overall, is becoming rather aged, and in a lot of homes, it’s just time to fix ’em up.
Whatever the motivation, it’s clear that these parts of our houses are no longer just “rooms” any more. Where we used to shut away our kitchens because they were the centers of household drudgery, now we flaunt them. We prepare everything from Tater Tots to creme broulee surrounded by the finest appointments we can afford. We’ve consecrated these rooms as temples of mechanical efficiency and family togetherness, and if you don’t at least aspire to maple cabinets and granite countertops, you’re ignoring a moral imperative.
And the bathrooms. Marge, you should see the things that I have seen. The ordinary visitor to this trade show might be forgiven a few Gomer Pyle Moments (“Well, gol-l-l-l-l-ee!”) upon being shown such amenities as Kallista’s sterling-silver bathroom faucets, displayed en suite with Baccarat crystal sconces. Whirlpool tubs have SurroundSound and built-in video screens. And how could I get along without a champagne chiller next to the “spa”?
But it’s not just the opulence, it’s the for-cryin’-out-loud cosmic significance of it all. At this show, marketing directors look you in the eye and tell you that Americans are searching for spiritual fulfillment and finding it in their bathrooms. Manufacturers fund entire Yankelovich studies to determine that the national mood demands countertop colors with “cleansing, healing properties of the earth. ” Somehow, this is supposed to explain why Corian has named one of its colors “gravel.”
(One bit of good news, though, is that my pink bathroom tiles–the ones that went out of style 30 years ago–may be poised for a comeback, according to one color analyst, though I suspect that she might want to reconsider that prediction after actually seeing my bathroom. Even so, I’d like to think that false hope is better than no hope at all.)
Truth is, my job here is to give consumers some idea of what kinds of things they might actually pick out for their own homes. So it seems to me that I’d best leave the Bigger Meaning of It All to the likes of your anthropologist progeny. But if you’d care to peek, here’s what I pulled out of my notebook:
Hi-yo, more silver
Undoubtedly, the “commercial look” of stainless-steel appliances has gone mainstream. (I even noticed brushed aluminum kitchen cabinets by Canyon Creek.)
But now, Viking Range Corp., the company that is generally given credit for starting this craze, has begun to think that some consumers just can’t warm up to the hard edges of refrigerators that look like they belong to a caterer. So it has introduced its Designer Series that are, yes, indeed, dressed in stainless steel, though gone are the industrial-looking handles and edges, having been replaced by smooth, sculpted-looking handles and more rounded edges.
Frigidaire seems to be thinking along the same lines, having inaugurated a stainless line called Soft Look and aiming for a price range that has what it calls “mainstream” appeal.
One attractive (and softening) spin on stainless: Pfeiffer has brought out a kitchen sink called Mixa that’s all colorful Corian, except for the stainless steel “pan” on the bottom.
It came from the East
So who am I to say that consumers aren’t looking for spirituality in their bathrooms? Clearly, somebody–quite a few somebodies, really–has determined to make bathroom fixtures with Asian design influences. These tend to have simple lines with–all right, I’ll say it–a meditative aspect.
Porcher, the high-end division of American Standard, even calls one of its bath sinks “Zen,” and manufacturers all over the trade-show floor showed bath sinks, tubs and vanities sheathed in dark, minimalist wooden framing. Lotus and bamboo decoration abounded.
Kohler introduced two kinds of ceramic bath faucets with a distinctly Asian style. In both, water spills out of the spout “with a tranquil sound,” as the company describes it.
Flowing water also played a big role in a futuristic–and distinctly Asian-themed–kitchen displayed by Kitchen and Bath Business magazine and designed by Fu-Tung Cheng of Berkeley, Calif. Here, a wave of water flowed the length of a countertop, through a 16-foot-long channel; it poured into a reservoir made from an ancient Chinese rice-pounding stone. Cheng collaborated on the prototype with St. Charles Kitchens, which plans to market Cheng’s designs in 2001.
The connected kitchen
Appliance manufacturers have toned down some of their prognostications about Internet-connected appliances–they’re still investigating whether anyone besides Bill Gates would want his alarm clock to talk to his coffee maker–but there was one notable techie inclusion in the show.
It’s called the Icebox and its appeal to anyone who spends a lot of time in a kitchen will travel faster than a T-1 line. Here’s the idea: Take a tiny monitor (9-inch display) that requires little space on an already-crowded kitchen counter (or hang it, under-mounted on a cabinet). Then give it a smallish, separate keyboard that has been rubberized to make it impervious to water and, say, grape jelly.
Make it a tool for e-mail, Web access, online shopping, cable TV, audio and video CDs. Give it high-quality speakers. Then you’ll have what the manufacturer, CMi Worldwide in Seattle, describes as the first “infopliance.”
This version, at about $500, should show up in big-box appliance stores this summer, according to company spokesmen. Another version, with a larger, flat-screen LCD display, is designed to be built into overhead kitchen cabinets and will flip up and out of the way when not in use. It has a faster modem than its little brother and it’s going to cost about $2,200. It will be available only through builders and contractors because of its built-in nature, the company says.
Make it simple, make it match
Moen’s new M-Pact line is intended to change your bathroom sink’s appearance as simply as you change your wristwatch. A common valve system is designed to work with an assortment of faucet styles that can simply be unscrewed and replaced.
Such faucetry is part of an overall make-everything-match movement that puts your towel bars in sync with your shower-door handles, etc. One of my favorite examples was KitchenAid’s Pro-Line cooktop, which contained framed “inserts” for ceramic tile squares that would make your range match your backsplash, if that’s what your heart desires. A KitchenAid representative told me she saw the possibility of homeowners having such tiles made with portraits of the kids–or even the dog.
A good man, Charlie Brown
“Decorator” knobs for cabinets and drawer pulls and their matching switchplates are always all over this show. A standout for its timing, at the very least, was a firm called Nifty Nob from Urbandale, Iowa, that recently secured the rights to make such items in the image of Snoopy, Linus, Lucy et al.
Company President Susan Zimmerman acknowledges that the recent death of Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz has renewed the popularity of the comic-strip figures. “They took (the prototypes) to him for his approval when he was on his deathbed,” she said. “And he liked them. I’m sorry that he never got to see the finished product.”
Germ warfare: Bacteriophobes have a couple of new allies in the bathroom: Toto, the Japanese toilet maker, offers a SanaGloss glaze that it claims seals the porcelain and eliminates growth of bacteria and molds and prevents staining, scaling and lime buildup.
Villeroy & Boch, most widely known for its dinner china, also has a line of ceramic tile and bath fixtures. It is making claims similar to Toto’s for its modified surface, called CeramicPlus. The company says that beyond residential applications, it sees a market in hospitals, schools, restaurants and hotels.
What? No waterbed? And lastly, if you’re one of those folks who joke about how you seem to “live” in your car, some people are taking you seriously. Maytag has teamed with Ford to create a “concept car” intended to make life easier for those of us who occasionally feel like prisoners of the mini-van.
The strictly prototypical Windstar on display at the show was crammed with the appliances of daily life. To name but a few: vacuum cleaner; trash compactor (you have to admit that has a certain appeal, yes?); refrigeration unit that pops out and doubles as a portable picnic cooler; microwave oven; cupholders that can heat or chill; and, in the biggest stretch of all, a washer and dryer.
Now, really, would you want your laundry to follow you around? Have we taken this multi-tasking business a bit too far? Couldn’t we have brought Kohler in and installed a bathroom, too?
Meditate on that.
