Peel Cottage Bathroom

South Kensington, London

2009

Designed as a Gesamtkunstwerk or total work of art, the interior of this bathroom consists of a 2-light stained glass window, bronze window handles, and interrelated mouth-blown Venetian glass smalti mosaic floor and walls. The curved, reflective plaster-painted walls were designed to catch the transillumination of colour from the window, which incorporates collaged fragments of medieval and Renaissance stained glass. The white, hand-cut smalti passage of Brian's characteristic line, which extends across the floor mosaic, is continued in the skull portrait on the wall. Preparatory watercolour studies and independent paintings in oil were made for these architecturaly-integrated artworks.