Commission 01 · Basins, vanities & baths
Helix washstand
حوض حلزوني
The piece people send us most often, and the one most workshops quote wrongly. It is not carved from a block and it is not a single spiral — it is a set of identical discs, each cut with a segment removed, stacked at a fixed rotation so the removed segments read as one continuous ribbon. The bowl sits on the top disc, the waste drops through the core, and the whole thing weighs more than the floor under it expects.
How it is built
A stack of stone discs turning around a hidden core.
- Discs are cut on the waterjet from a single slab so the grain runs the same way through every one. At 60,000 psi with garnet abrasive the machine holds a tenth of a millimetre and leaves no heat, so the stone does not micro-crack at the tight inside radius.
- Each disc is rotated by a fixed angle against the one below. The angle and the disc count decide how tight the twist reads: eight discs at 40° is a lazy curl, twelve at 30° is the tight helix people recognise.
- A stainless core takes the whole load. The stone is dowelled and epoxied to it, not to itself — stone in tension is stone that cracks, and a helix is nothing but tension.
- The visible edges are hand-dressed after assembly, because a waterjet leaves a faintly frosted arris that reads as unfinished at eye level.
| Typical size | 450–600 mm diameter, 850–900 mm to the rim |
|---|---|
| Disc count | 8 to 14, cut from one slab for grain continuity |
| Build | Waterjet discs, stainless core, dowelled and epoxied |
| Weight | Roughly 180–260 kg — the floor needs checking first |
| Waste | Through the core, so the trap is invisible |
Worth knowing before you order
Floor loading. A helix concentrates a quarter of a tonne onto a footprint the size of a dinner plate. On a suspended slab we spread it, and on a chalet timber floor we usually say no.
Stone
What it is cut from.
A busy granite hides the joints between discs; a quiet cream marble shows every one, which is a design choice rather than a fault. Black Aswan is the closest Egyptian stone to the dark speckled granite this piece is usually shown in.
Black Aswan
Dense black with a subtle grey crystal.
Imperial Grey Dark
The deep-toned selection of Imperial Grey, veins on charcoal.
Breccia Fawakhir
Angular fragments welded into a hard, mottled ground.
Sahara Brown
Egypt's brown granite — warm ground, dark crystal.
Karnak Grey
Medium-grain ash grey out of the Aswan beds.
These are stones we hold. See all 94
Also in basins, vanities & baths
Other commissions.
Monolithic vanity, basin carved in
One block. The basin is not fitted to it, it is taken out of it.
Mitred waterfall vanity
Twenty millimetres of stone that reads as two hundred.
Vessel basin, turned from block
A bowl with a wall you can see light through.
Solid stone bath
The heaviest thing that will ever go into the room.