User:Bishonen/European toilet paper holder
Toilet paper holders are an important facet of European [bathroom]] design. The earliest known toilet paper holders are thought to be those found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. In ancient Rome toilet paper holders designed by Vitruvius were prized as status symbols. The glory days of the European toilet paper holder were however the 16th to early 20th centuries, with their splendour of bathroom fittings stretching unbroken from Palladio to Fabergé. Individual toilet paper holders of spectacular opulence have again and again played key roles at crisis points in European history: a uniquely alarming Palladian polar bear holder dissuaded England's Virgin Queen Elizabeth I from marriage with the King of Sweden, one jewelled Fabergé holder precipitated the Russian Revolution, and another exacerbated the course of World War I. In spite of the undeniable historical importance of these cultural artefacts, their own history is surprisingly under-researched. Some feminist scholars ascribe this disproportion to the masculine domination technique of "toilet humor", meaning to belittle and ridicule toilet paper holders and other door furniture generally viewed as feminine.
Ancient toilet paper holders: Tutankhamun to Caligula
The ancient history of toilet paper holders confounds those who assume that bathroom fittings and sanitary arrangements were universally primitive before our own day. The earliest toilet paper holders known to historians are those found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. Howard Carter mistakenly catalogued them as scroll holders, but modern opinion is that they are in fact toilet paper holders for the convenience of the boy king in the afterlife. Made of solid gold, they are decorated with scenes of Egyptian contemporary life. They also contain cavities thought to be for the burning of scented incense. Later in Roman times toilet paper holders, similar in style to the Egyptian, were designed by Vitruvius, and much prized by the Romans as a symbol of status. The Emperor Caligula had many of these objets d'art made for his new palace, some of which have been uncovered on the Palatine hill.
Renaissance: first political use
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It is often thought that toilet paper holders similar to the baroque holder illustrated below right were an innovation of the 18th century, but this is false, as Palladio, doubtless inspired by Vitruvius, designed them at Villa Capra in the 16th century. These were of course Palladian toilet paper holders, magnificent objects adorned with fluted doric columns, supporting a ring from a lion's mouth, on which were hung sheets of decorated parchment.
Inaugurating a tradition among the crowned heads of Europe of using luxurious and unique toilet paper holders as politically significant gifts, King Eric XIV of Sweden commissioned a once-off, fearsome toilet paper holder from Palladio, featuring a polar bear's head in place of the usual Palladian lion, as a gift for Queen Elizabeth I of England. By sending this remarkable gift, which has unfortunately been lost to posterity, to the 28-year-old Virgin Queen in 1561, together with a full-length portrait of himself, Eric hoped to persuade her into a dynastically important marriage. Elizabeth, infatuated with her Master of Horse Lord Robert Dudley, had dithered before receiving the gifts, or as Clare Rider writes, "in characteristic manner, the Queen kept everyone guessing, refusing to commit herself on the subject of the royal marriage or the succession issue or to discuss such matters before Parliament". Her exact coeval Eric was a handsome, well-educated and talented Renaissance prince who had not yet begun to show signs of the insanity which was to blight the later part of his reign (see Lavery), unless indeed his lapse of judgement in sending such an alarming object as a betrothal present be accounted an early symptom of madness. At any rate Elizabeth, though well enough pleased with the portrait (shown left), declared upon sight of the sculpted polar bear's head with unusual decisiveness that she would never set foot in a nation that was home to such dreadful beasts, nor ever give herself nightmares by fetching toilet paper out of the mouth of it in effigy. Thus ignominiously ended a marriage project that would have changed the course of European history.
Toilet paper holders in medieval and later Tudor England do not seem to be documented at all. Whether this is due to the delicacy of the subject or to their not being used is little known. The most widely accepted theory (see Williams, p. 176) is that unlike in Spain, Italy, France and Sweden, where culture was of a greater refinement than in England, the English had no reservations about defecating in front of their servants, who probably then handed them the necessary paper or hemp. An official was known at the English Royal court as the "Page of the Stool" and it is known that his job was to remove the chamber pot when necessary. It seems likely he was also a human toilet paper holder.
This theory is supported by King Eric XIV's choice of gift to Elizabeth I. The Swedish ambassador had been instructed to advise on a gift which was to be something the Queen did not have, and as Elizabeth I was one of the world's most powerful monarchs at that time, she really would have been, as the old adage has it, "The woman who has everything"—except, it seems, a toilet paper holder. In the selection of this gift, which was something for very personal and intimate use, King Eric was appealing to her sense of femininity and metaphorically surrendering himself to the feminine bathroom decoration principle—basically, to matriarchal rule—in the projected marriage. Unfortunately for King Eric, the woman in question was proud of saying "I have the heart and mind of a man", and his implicit undertaking not to pee outside the pot (see section Gender perspective below) was not in this instance enough for her.
18th century: ancient astronaut theory refuted
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Invented
in 1879.
The holder pictured right is a modern copy of a landmark baroque toilet paper holder known as the "Blenheim holder", an understated version of Palladio's opulent design which was developed for Blenheim Palace by the architect Sir John Vanbrugh in the 1720s. The Blenheim holder is today perhaps best known for its anomalous resemblance to a modern [toilet roll holder]]. Vanbrugh's model predates the invention of the toilet roll itself by several centuries (compare [Toilet paper]]), and various non-mainstream conjectures including variants of the [ancient astronaut theory]] have been offered in explanation of this seemingly prophetic early design. However, Vanbrugh's austere black marble cylinder cannot in fact be loosened as in a modern roll holder, and most scholars assume that the sheets of newspaper which were commonly used for hygienic purposes in the 18th century were kept in place simply by being tucked behind the cylinder.
Several of these valuable antiques are still in use on the piano nobile at Blenheim Palace, although in the parts of the palace accessible to the public, modern copies have replaced the original fittings. The stylized seashell backing and subtly restrained flutings of Vanbrugh's design made it one of the most noted and appreciated features of the sumptuous Blenheim bathrooms, and effected something of a revolution in paper holder taste among the aristocracy and landed gentry. The English baroque toilet paper holder had arrived.
Victorian era: Gothic extravaganza
Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, took a personal interest in the design of toilet paper holders. He personally designed for the queen both Balmoral Castle and Osborne House, and in each of these sumptuous holiday residences he designed the toilet paper holders to blend with the surroundings. For instance, in the private apartments at Balmoral, the holders have been designed as stag's heads, and the individual sheets of paper were hung daily by the queen's personal servant on the tips of the horns. In this way Prince Albert was emulating the Gothic Germanic design of paper holders in his homeland. It was at Osborne, however, that delight of architecture, overlooking the Solent, that he gave full rein to his architectural freedom. Here the toilet paper holders were of an oceanic nature, carved from Isterian limestone and embellished with onyx. They depicted scenes of Neptune and the water gods performing their toilet in bass relief. Gladstone, visiting Osborne in 1889, noted in his journal the eccentricities of the bathroom fittings, while a decade earlier Disraeli, writing from Osborne, in a letter to his wife wrote "My Dear, until one has seen the luxuriant fitments of the bathrooms here, one has not lived". He was undoubtedly referring to the toilet paper holders.
Imperial Russian toilet tissue dispenser
Of all toilet paper holders probably the most beautiful, but ironically the most elusive and today unrecorded, were those made in St. Petersburg for the Russian aristocracy by Peter Carl Fabergé. Fabergé, court jeweller to the Tsar of Russia, and purveyor of jewel-encrusted objets d'art to the elite of the world, entranced the Romanov family with his cuff-links, cigarette cases, parasol handles, toilet paper holders, and Easter eggs. Many of the Romanov family's palaces contained small rooms with jewelled toilet paper holders designed by the great master jeweller. Sadly, not one example is known to remain. The speculation that Fabergé's famous music-box Easter eggs may have originally been portable musical toilet paper holders is seen by modern scholars as wishful thinking: the world of bathroom art would be the richer if it were the case, indeed, but x-ray examination of music-box eggs such as the one pictured right have revealed no traces of radical alterations, and all contemporary references suggest that the Fabergé toilet paper holders were of the wall holder type. Unfortunately so, because, fixed to the walls of the gilded bathrooms, they were left behind by the fleeing aristocrats, and then looted by revolutionaries for their stones, their historic importance dismissed. One sole example remained intact at Tsarskoe Selo and this was looted along with the famed amber room by the Nazis in 1945. Anna Vyrubova in her Memories of the Russian Court, describing a stomach complaint, makes veiled reference to the opulence of the dowager Empress's bathroom fittings. Empress Marie was known for her love of jewels and bathroom fittings. Robert K. Massie in Nicholas and Alexandra describes the Empress Alexandra's own bathroom as being very simple and modest, yet a newspaper feature as early as 1913 reports Alexandra as having given Rasputin a Fabergé toilet paper holder. At a time when many peasants and serfs could not afford soft toilet tissue this was certainly a provocative act, and was undoubtedly one cause of the revolution.
Empress Marie writing to her daughter Xenia in 1926 wrote: "I often feel the revolution began with that Fabergé toilet paper holder". However, she was more likely referring to a little known incident at Christmas 1913, when the Kaiser discovered he had only received a jar of caviar for Christmas from the Tsar, while his cousin George V had received a Fabergé toilet paper holder. The resultant diplomatic incident caused a permanent rift between the Royal houses of Europe, and one can only speculate as to whether this was part of the Kaiser's underlying hostility to Russia and Britain in 1914.
Felix Yusupov, the transvestite murderer of Rasputin, almost certainly owned several Fabergé toilet paper holders. In his book Lost Splendour he gives us one of the few detailed descriptions of a Fabergé original: "My favourite was a gift from Princess Olga Marizinski, fashioned from malachite, edged with rose cut diamonds, and with the Marizinski crest (a treble headed ostrich erect) depicted in Burmese rubies. When the paper was pulled, a spring caused a hidden musical movement to play the 'Star Spangled Banner', hence one knew when to stand up. This toilet paper holder had been a special commission from Fabergé, and was a killing example of the Princess's renowned wit and sense of humour." While better known to posterity for her unconventional sex life, Princess Marizinski was said to own one of the largest collections of Fabergé's art in Russia.
So, what of the legacy of the rarest and most prized toilet paper holders of all? Interestingly in 1973, when a new book of Queen Elizabeth II's jewels was published, Buckingham Palace refused to comment when questioned about the whereabouts of the 1913 Fabergé toilet paper holder, causing speculation that it is today still in regular but very private use.
Gender perspective: "invisible" toilet paper holders
Bathroom fitments and particularly toilet paper holders are inscribed into Western culture as inherently debased, minor, or "funny", argues Marta Zajac, who has theorized the belittling and ridicule of toilet paper holders as being a masculine domination technique. Using the concept of this domination technique, which she has dubbed "toilet humour", Zajac has shown that toilet paper holders are gendered feminine in two different ways. Firstly, the domestic space defined by gender is epitomized in the toilet, the most feminine place in the house, where men often feel compelled to re-mark the territory as masculine and as "theirs" by urinating outside the bowl, in order to feel psychologically able to use the facilities at all. Secondly, the toilet paper holder, being "door furniture", is a thing that women view more often than men, a site where women can subvert the dominant paradigm by using their sexual difference, i.e. by sitting facing the door as opposed to standing facing the wall, thereby seeing the paper holder. To men, who see only the wall behind the pot, the paper holder is an "invisible" art object, a suggestion which could be taken to account for the ignorance and scepticism of the history of these artefacts which prevail in patriarchal societies.
References
- Blunt, Anthone (ed.) (1978). Baroque and Rococo: Architecture and Decoration. New York: Harper & Row.
- Bourdieu, Pierre (tr. Richard Nice, 2001). Masculine Domination. Cambridge: Polity.
- Lavery, Jason (Studies in Central European Histories, 2002). Germany's Northern Challenge: The Holy Roman Empire and the Scandinavian Struggle for the Baltic, 1563–1576. Boston, Massachussetts: Brill.
- Massie, Robert K. (1967). Nicholas and Alexandra. London: Victor Gollancz.
- Reyburn, W. (1969). Flushed with Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper. London.
- Rider, Clare (2002) "Gorboduc, or the Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrox", a discussion of the marriage project between Eric XIV of Sweden and Elizabeth I of England, as treated in the play Gorboduc (1561).
- Vyrubova, Anna (1923). Memories of the Russian Court. New York: Macmillan.
- Williams, Neville (1971). Royal Homes of Great Britain from Medieval to Modern Times. London: Lutterworth Press.
- Yusupov, Felix (1953). Lost Splendour. London: Cape.
- Zajac, Marta (2003). The Feminine of Difference: Gilles Deleuze, Hélène Cixous, and Contemporary Critique of the Marquis de Sade. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang.