Two Recent Books Tell Top Toilet Tales.
By James DiGiovanna
The Porcelain God: A Social History of the Toilet, by Julie
L. Horan (Carol Publishing Group). Paper, $17.95.
Temples of Convenience and Chambers of Delight, by Lucinda
Lambton (St. Martin's Press). Cloth, $24.95
THESE TWO RECENTLY published books on that most private of rooms
supplement each other nicely. Temples of Convenience is
richly illustrated, with sumptuously reproduced photographs of
historical toilets. One photo shows a haunting fog hanging over
the Great Baths of Bath, a Roman-built latrine and sauna. In another,
beautiful early 20th-century toilets, with their Art Deco tiling,
are set against 17th-century chamber pots delicately carved in
mahogany. The text is little more than captions, but each provides
the historical context for these unusual and often oddly attractive
waste disposal systems.
The Porcelain God lacks Temples' photography,
but makes up for it with an amusing anecdotal history of defecation
and urination. Quotes from Isaiah ("My bowels shall sound
like an harp") mingle with informative tidbits such as the
fact that "No. 1" and "No. 2" carry the same
significance in Chinese as in English, or that Henry IV had to
forbid his nobles from relieving themselves in the corners of
his palace. Seems things were getting a bit gamey.
Together, these two books provide a much-needed pictorial and
verbal history of a topic that's received too little academic
attention to date.
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