Lavish Lavs

An unusual collection inspired a far from bog-standard business.

- Rowan Mantell

MARK GUEST grew up in a council house with just an outside toilet.

Today he and his partner Kelly Allnutt (childhood bathroom inside, but avocado-coloured) have a collection of beautiful flower-painted Victorian loos, live in a home with seven (plumbedin) toilets, and run a business creating and selling quirky lavs around the world. The unusual family business began with Mark’s toilet collection. “I began collecting old toilets about 15 years ago,” he said. “I was interested in ornate and decorative things and saw these beautiful old toilets.”

He was working as a management consultant but his real passion was in restoring old houses and as he visited auctions to source items, he developed a new appreciation of the humble toilet.

Today his collection sits alongside examples of the brand new loos they have inspired.

There are Victorian porcelain pans, festooned with foliage and flowers, and given names such as ‘deluge;’ there are art deco designs, and modernist models from the 1930s; there are also antique sinks and basins, ornate brass flush pulls and toilet roll holders and serpent-shaped taps. The collection became the inspiration for a  new range of replica bathroom furnishings, and a new business for Mark and Kelly, called The Remarkable Toilet Company.