Folded Beauty

Autumn Exhibition
8.9.2010 - 23.1.2011
Press Release June 2010

General Press information

Imperial Furniture Collection
Schloß Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H.
press information

Sanitary Furniture

Movable toilets, chamber-pots, bourdalous (chamber-pots for ladies), bidets, spittoons and wash-stands are exhibited in this room as necessary accessories of daily life.

When the lever (morning-reception) was introduced into the courtly ceremonial under Louis XIV of France, making one’s toilet – seen as part of a persons privacy in modern times – became a public show. This included the process of washing and dressing but also the movable toilet. In the baroque era, people seldom took a bath and used to clean their bodies with dry cloth. Later on water was again more frequently used. Wash-stands and dressing- tables as well as movable toilets, bidets and chamber-pots were to be found in dressing-rooms and bedrooms. The first bathtub in Vienna’s Hofburg Palace was installed for Empress Maria Ludovica in 1810. Under Archduchesss Sophie, a private lavatory was built after the English model in1835. In the middle of the 19^th century, modern plumbing was installed in the Hofburg Palace. Empress Elisabeth had a bathroom with a bathtub from 1876, and Crown Prince Rudolf from 1877. Emperor Franz Joseph, on the other hand, used a movable bathtub.

Spittoons were a very important part of the furniture in every apartment. The large variety of designs shows the high standards of craftsmanship in the Biedermeier era.