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Fantini does not call them handles for long. In its own account of Flora, the three grips that Vincent Van Duysen designed are “micro domestic architectures”: studied with extreme attention to ergonomics, pleasant to the touch, made for an everyday gesture. Read that way, the counter becomes a small plot and each handle a building on it, with one wing, with two, or with four. The idea is less fanciful than it sounds. A handle is the one part of a bathroom fitting that people both look at and hold, and here it has been given a plan and an elevation.
Few Italian bathroom fittings are planned from the handle outward, yet this is the order Fantini suggests. At the basin the choice is widest. A three-hole set, where two handles stand guard beside the spout, accepts any of the three designs; a single-hole mixer, all soft lines, has the one-wing handle; a wall-mounted set does the same work off the wall. The body is always brass. Five finishes dress it, Brushed Steel Look, Matt Gun Metal, Mokka, Polished Nickel and Chrome, and each one extends to every element of the series. Across an executive floor bathroom, the detail can repeat from basin to basin without a break.
From there the collection grows piece by piece. Smallest are the bidet mixer and the hand shower on its hook. Next come the concealed shower mixers and thermostats, with their round overhead showers, and the kitchen mixer, whose spout turns and whose spray pulls out. Larger again is the bath, served from the wall, from the rim, or by a mixer that stands on the floor. Tallest of all is Flora Outdoor, the stainless steel column for showering in a garden or on a terrace. La Mercanti records in the project schedule the handle chosen for each bathroom.
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As a finish that “gives a modern and sophisticated touch, ideal for environments with a contemporary character”. Steel Look is a PVD finish applied over the brass body of the mixer, and it is available on every element of the collection, from basin sets to shower fittings.
A swivel aerator: the outlet at the tip of the spout is jointed, so the direction of the stream can be adjusted by hand. The bidet mixer itself is a single-hole, single-lever model, and the same series includes a health faucet for the wall beside the WC.
Fantini makes both. The 1/2″ version has rosettes and a diverter for two outlets and is fitted vertically. The 3/4″ versions serve two or three outlets, either through a rotary diverter with closure or through ON/OFF push buttons. Your plumber will choose by the number of outlets and the pipework.
For the wall there are four: 30, 35, 40 and 45 cm. For the ceiling there are two, 10 and 25 cm. All have a round rosette, and an optional provision allows fixing on gypsum board. The arm is ordered separately from the overhead shower it carries.
The version for that is Flora Outdoor: its shower column is declared for both outdoor and indoor use. Unlike the bathroom mixers it has AISI 316L stainless steel as its base material, and it comes in two finishes only, Black Velvet and Brushed stainless steel.
Fantini supplies the visible plumbing around Flora in matching finishes. Five steps to list it, so that nothing chrome appears beside a Mokka mixer.
Fix the finish of the Flora mixers first, one of the five in the collection, and note its name on the first page of the schedule. The complements described below are offered by Fantini in those very finishes, so the choice made here runs through the whole list.
Flora basin mixers can be ordered without a waste. In that case add one of the 1″1/4 wastes of the series, either the push type or the free-flow type, whichever the chosen basin calls for; the basin maker’s sheet says which.
Under a wall-hung or countertop basin the trap is in plain view. Fantini lists a bottle trap and a pair of filters with stop, both finished to match, so the space below the basin belongs to the room and not to the plumbing.
The flush plate depends on the concealed cistern. Fantini makes plates for Geberit Sigma 8 and Sigma 12, with round raised buttons or square flush ones, and for TECE (Tecebox Octa II). Confirm the cistern model with the installer before ordering.
If the bathroom has a bath, the last item is the bath waste column with filling function, again in the finish of the mixers. With it, every metal part a guest can see carries one surface.
