In 1873, an Austrian immigrant named Kohler founded an agricultural hardware company in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Ten years later, he took a "horse trough/hog scalder", sprinkled some enamel on it and baked it at 1700 degrees Fahrenheit. He discovered that process made pretty good bathtubs, and in so doing, he established one of America's most recognized brands in plumbing fixtures. (Kohler History)

In the 1981, the grandson of the founder converted the old immigrant barracks, the American Club, into the midwest's only triple-A five diamond resort, with golf courses, nature preserves, a shopping mall and fantastic bathtubs "all in close proximity to one of America's foremost plumbing manufacturers."

Theirs is a canny mix of luxury and plumbing. Nice kitchen and bathroom fixtures help sell homes. Kohler designs things that might be costly or extravagant, but never too outlandish for a house for sale. Or so I thought, until I saw their "Purist" line, launched in 2002.

The Purist Suite removes the metal and elaborate porcelain barriers between the user and their pleasure with water. Kohler is pushing Purist as a spa in the home. The tubs associated with this line feature strobing colored LEDs - chromatherapy. There is no Purist toilet, but there are Purist sinks that will blow your mind:

This mutant sink photo has been my desktop background picture for the last few weeks.

Between $525 and $785 for the flat wet surface lavatory and $2008 for the Purist™ 25-1/2" x 36" Mirrored Cabinet with Integral Laminar Faucet-w/Slide-out Wood Shelf on Left Side - that's so the water comes out of a hole in the mirror.

I think of a sink and I see an indent, a depression, some concave pocket in a surface that is designed to receive water and hold it for a time. Kohler has removed the bowl from the sink - there's nowhere to catch the flow. Water simply passes out from the wall, falls against a flat surface and trickles into a surrounding moat.

The sink was round and they've proven it flat. They removed soaking from the function of this sink, but when's the last time I soaked something in a sink? Actually, they do have some facility for soaking with the Purist™ Wet Surface Lavatory (K-2313) - they sell an optional Purist Hand Basin for $160. You can see a picture of a lady demonstrating it here:

Handwashing in roughly $2700 of zen bathroom hardware.

It's a delicate scene: soft lighting, good clear skin leaning over clean stone lines with thick flowing water - a stream from the mirror; sheets and puddles of water below her hands. The artifice is thick. They have obscured the drain, the faucet, even the handle. All this hidden technology is costly. Serenity is precious.

Zen voyeurs can review a short video about the Purist line on the Kohler web site (in Windows movie format or RealVideo). A gentle, clean woman's voice intones in precise English: "the caressing eppervescence and play of water, across a level plain," while we see water striking that incongruously flat "lavastone countertop."

The script describing the Purist line uses the word play - like pirates, perhaps, this play is associated with freedom. With the Purist line, water is freed from plumbing. Water is freed from form and technology and stricture. There is just rocks and streams. Water can play, dance across a surface, a canvas for a clear liquid painting. Can you picture yourself leaning over, ingratefully spitting toothpaste into this?

Purist play is luxury. This vision of freedom for water is expensive. Unrestrained water is increasingly a guilty pleasure; limitless water is a myth dispelled by increasingly sad news of shortage. In that particularly-Californian context, the Purist suite assumes an even greater character of privilege. We can play with water? Kohler liberates us from low-flow!

But political considerations soil the flat fun of the spirit in this sink. The Purist Lavatory Sink is immediately challenging. A brave reconsidering of essential human tools. Look! The water is coming out of the mirror! That's like magic. And the sink is flat? That's confusing! Silly almost! It's an anti-sink!