Narcissus Washstand
   
  1865-7. Originally designed by Burges for his bedroom at Buckingham Street, the washstand was subsequently moved to Tower House, again located in the designer’s own Mermaid Bedroom, where the main background décor colour was a similar rich red. It is composed of a variety of painted woods, marble, vellum, tinfoil, mother-of -pearl, glass, bronze, silver, iron, tin, brass, and possibly gold, the principal colour scheme being red and gold.

 
     
Three panels on vellum, thought to have been painted by J.A.Fitzgerald in 1866, and repainted by Frederick Weekes in 1872 to Burges’s designs, depict the story of Narcissus. Narcissus is punished by Aphrodite for rejecting the nymph Echo and causing her to die of a broken heart. He is forced to look into a pool and, never having seen himself in a mirror before, he falls in love with his own reflection, mistaking it for a water-nymph.
           
   
 
He is so captivated he dies of hunger and despair, whereupon Aphrodite transforms him into a flower. Around these panels is an inscription taken from Chaucer’s Romaunt of the Rose: ‘This is the mirror perrilus in which the proude Narcissus sey al his fair face bright’. Further scenes from this text are depicted in other parts of Tower House, in the stained glass on the staircase (the storming of the castle of love) and the chimneypiece in the drawing room (the garden of love).
     
Other smaller ornamental panels around the paintings are inset with tinfoil or mother-of-pearl. Located behind these panels and the paintings is a zinc lined tank into which hot water was poured through a hole in the left-hand corner. The wood around this water inlet is protected by an area of mosaic tiling, whilst the top of the tank is surrounded by battlements to prevent water spilling down the sides of the washstand. On either side of the tank are hinged candle holders, whilst the corners are ornamented with grotesques based on medieval manuscripts.  
     
The basin of the washstand is carved from solid marble and inlaid with five silver fish, with possible traces of gilding. The bearded face of Neptune serves as an overflow. To the left of the basin is a smaller bowl of copper, possibly a soap or shaving dish, in which sits a small silver frog, with a silver insect inset in the handle. Behind the basin are three bronze figures. The central one is a tap handle in the shape of a seated chinese holy man, which controls the flow of water. To the right a kneeling ram, set with 22ct gold nuggets, operates the drainage valve. The left hand figure is a standing stork, which does not appear to have any funtional purpose. Above these hangs a sea serpent, jaws wide open, from which the water would flow into the basin. The splash-back is made of pieces of different coloured marble.
     
   The basin is designed to empty into a zinc lined waste water tank below, accessible through the cupboard doors. Hinged drawers on either side of the cupboard, below the candle holders, swing out sideways to provide storage.
Rediscovered by Sir John Betjeman during the 1940s, the washstand was given by him to the writer Evelyn Waugh, and appears in the latter’s fictional autobiography, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold.
     
     
 

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