This image, contained in the 37-count felony indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records stored in a bathroom at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. As serious decorators will tell you, columnist Donald Morrison notes, chandeliers are for people with more money than taste — and almost never belong in a bathroom.
This image, contained in the 37-count felony indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records stored in a bathroom at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. As serious decorators will tell you, columnist Donald Morrison notes, chandeliers are for people with more money than taste — and almost never belong in a bathroom. Entry Chandelier
As photos go, it’s hardly a Pulitzer Prize winner, even though the incident depicted is of historic importance and very much in the news.
That news, of course, is the precedent-shattering arraignment in a Miami federal courtroom this week of a former president and current presidential candidate on charges of mishandling intelligence documents.
The details and implications of the case have been widely reported. So, let’s focus on a related offense that, inexplicably, is not being prosecuted: having a chandelier in the bathroom.
As serious decorators will tell you, chandeliers are for people with more money than taste — and almost never belong in a bathroom. But there it is, in the upper center of the photo in question, big as a toilet bowl and dripping with strings of cut-glass bangles.
The light fixture is so incongruously dazzling you almost don’t notice the three-dozen or so document boxes stacked beneath it.
The writer, critic and filmmaker Susan Sontag, in her seminal 1977 work “On Photography,” warned us about that medium. It “imposes a way of seeing,” she said, that can alter reality in our mind’s eye. Like other works of human artifice, a photograph can be cunningly composed, rendered more aesthetically pleasing than reality.
That’s unlikely in the case of the bathroom photo. It was taken by a federal investigator, not Henri Cartier-Bresson. It has little in the way of aesthetic appeal, with all the squished cardboard boxes, the white plastic trash can and the cheap Bed, Bath and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt shower curtain. (A billionaire can’t afford glass doors?)
The photo was submitted as evidence at last week’s arraignment. It’s a crime-scene document, not a museum piece. Except, perhaps, for the chandelier, whose graceful curves — echoed in the Late Baroque mirror frame and beaded-glass wall sconce — give the scene an air of irresistible nuttiness. Chandeliers can do that.
The chandelier — from the French word for candle — has a long history of messing with our minds. Devices for hanging candles from the ceiling date back to ancient times, but they became objects of high ostentation around the 18th century. That’s when artisans learned to make lead-crystal prisms that refract the light.
Chandeliers were considered elegant and prestigious even after prices declined with the substitution of cut glass for crystal in the 19th century. The dawn of the electric light bulb brought an explosion of cheap chandeliers, though their aura of opulence endured long after.
The former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Fla., built in the 1920s and renovated by him in the 1980s, is reported to contain 33 bathrooms. Thus, his supporters say, it’s understandable that one of the more lightly trafficked among them might be pressed into service as a document storehouse.
Ah, but that photo. Look at it closely and you’ll see a stack of fresh white towels on the shiny marble sink and, next to the comfort-height toilet, an open box of facial tissues. This is a working water closet, not a disused storage closet. At least the guests had something to read.
The former president has a history with toilets. He is known, for instance, to tear documents into pieces after reading, and then flush them to oblivion. Plumbers discovered the practice when they were called to fix clogged pipes at the White House shortly after the 2021 transition. There’s no reason to think the building’s outgoing occupant behaves differently at Mar-a-Lago.
No one knows where he picked up that habit. Or why he didn’t surrender those sensitive documents when asked. Or what all this might have to do with chandeliers. But I’ll give it a try.
First, psychologists often counsel new parents against overly aggressive toilet training, lest a child become obsessed with bodily functions and, as an adult, excessively controlling or even ... retentive.
Second, Belgian researchers a decade ago determined that human brains are hard-wired with an attraction to shiny objects, especially ones that sparkle or refract light. Something to do with water, and our ancestors’ recognition of its importance to life.
Third, and to my profound horror, some decorating magazines and websites are starting to feature chandeliers in bathrooms — a development that can be viewed as the first step toward civilizational decline.
Thus, we see the making of a man with a famously troubled childhood, a widely reported desire to control those around him and retain everything he touches, a weakness for shiny objects, the aesthetic sensibility of Louis XV, as well as an enduring relationship with toilets.
These developments, may it please the court, explain the purloined documents, the chandelier in the bathroom and the slow death of good taste. Mystery solved. Case closed.
Donald Morrison is an Eagle columnist and co-chairman of the advisory board. The opinions expressed by columnists do not necessarily reflect the views of The Berkshire Eagle.
Your browser is out of date and potentially vulnerable to security risks. We recommend switching to one of the following browsers:
Reading Lights Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device.