The Bath of Today

A washroom by candlelight, and one brass tap that does not belong in it. Turn it on and the room catches up with you. You stand by the front wall of a small room of dark wood: a plank floor, plank walls and a ceiling of beams. On the left, a window closed with wooden shutters, with light showing through the cracks, and further back a small iron stove with a copper kettle on it and a glow in its fire door. Ahead of you a tin tub stands on the floor, and beside it a stool with a single candle. At the back, a plain wooden door, shut, with a thin line of light under it and a brass plate above it reading Badkamereend. Next to the tub, on a copper standpipe, stands a brass tap with a yellow handle. Turning the yellow handle starts a thin, cold jet into the tub, and then a ring of warm light rolls out from the tap and through the whole room. Everything it passes changes: the planks underfoot become small unglazed terracotta tiles, the walls become smooth panels, crimson on the left and deep blue on the right, the beams become a flat ceiling with light glowing from behind aluminium panels, the shutters give way to a large open window with the sun falling in across the floor, the tub becomes a citrus yellow bath, the stove becomes a yellow basin on a pedestal, and the candle goes out. The jet turns warm and wide and fills the yellow bath; the still water throws a patch of light onto the ceiling, and a little steam rises and clears. Then the wooden door at the back swings open onto a sunlit bathroom of today, with a pale bath under a bright window and a yellow rubber duck on its rim. After that nothing moves. With reduced motion the room is already changed when you arrive, and the door already open. The tap can also be used with the button Turn on the hot tap. The open door is the way on: it opens badkamereend.nl in this same tab. The small door behind you goes back to the front page, and so does the link Back to the zeppelin in the top left corner of the image. Drag the image or use the arrow keys to look around.