Why we design our own products, and what happens in the workshops before a tap or a basin reaches our showroom in Zürich.
When we opened in 1996, we sold what good European manufacturers produced. That worked for a while. Then, one by one, suppliers began closing down or moving their production out of Europe. The catalogs still looked the same, but the products behind them changed. Castings got thinner. Hand-polishing was replaced by machine finishing. Details that defined a piece quietly disappeared.
At some point we faced a choice: accept that, or take the designs into our own hands. We chose the second option. Today, every product we sell is our own design, manufactured by workshops we know personally in England, France and Italy.
This article explains how that works.
Why the origin matters
A cross-handle tap from a European workshop and one from a low-cost factory can look identical in a photo. The difference shows up later. In the weight of the body. In how the valve feels after five years of daily use. In whether you can still get a spare part after fifteen.
Our fittings are made from solid brass, machined and assembled in workshops that have been doing this work for generations. The people there know why a valve seat is cut a certain way. That knowledge does not transfer to a factory that won the contract on price.
There is also a simpler reason. Short supply chains, European labour standards and fair working conditions are things we can verify. We visit these workshops. We know the people who make our products by name.
Birmingham: brass accessories, made by hand
Our Ritz accessories come from a small metalwork shop in Birmingham, the historic centre of English brass manufacturing. The process has barely changed in a century. Brass is cast or turned on lathes, ground, then polished by hand before receiving its finish in chrome, polished nickel or polished brass.
Hand-polishing is slow. It is also the reason a Ritz towel rail has soft, even surfaces without the flat spots that machine polishing leaves on curved forms. Each piece passes through the same pair of hands several times before it is done.
Birmingham also produces our solid wood toilet seats in five wood variants, fitted with brass hinges from the same workshop network.
England and France: the fittings
Our tap series are manufactured in England and France, depending on the series. The bodies are solid brass. Valves, cartridges and seals are European-made components chosen for one criterion above all: they must still be replaceable decades from now.
The Rockwell series carries ceramic handle inserts in ten colours. The ceramic stays cool to the touch and gives a better grip than bare metal. Rockwell’s urban, unfussy forms have made it our most versatile series, at home in period settings and mid-century rooms alike.
The Sinclair series, our newest, picks up a detail from the 1920s: handles shaped like aircraft propellers, a classic of that era. It is carefully made in France.
Paris and Lennox round out the range, each with its own character, all available in our four finishes: chrome, polished nickel, matt nickel and polished brass.
Italy and England: the ceramics
Our ceramics are made in Italy and England. The Square series, with its Art Deco forms from around 1930, comes from an Italian manufacturer that still produces in traditional moulds. The Palazzo series reproduces original basin and WC forms from 1900 to 1920, with the generous proportions of that era.
Ceramic production of this kind is a shrinking craft. Large sanitary manufacturers work with pressure casting and standardised forms optimised for volume. The historical shapes we reproduce need slip casting in plaster moulds, longer drying times and more manual finishing. Few factories still want that work. We are glad to have found partners who do.
The Hanley bathtub is made in England from Vitrite, a composite of stone, minerals and resin. At 120 kg it has the mass and stability of the ceramic original it copies: a tub from the Grand Hôtel Aix-les-Bains, around 1920.
From sketch to finished product
A new product starts with a historical original. Sometimes a piece we found, sometimes a form documented in old catalogs or photographs. We draw it, adapt the internals to modern plumbing standards, and work with the manufacturer on prototypes.
That last step takes the longest. A form that worked in 1920 with the plumbing of 1920 needs careful reworking to accept a Geberit concealed cistern or a modern 3/8 inch connection without losing its proportions. Several rounds of prototypes are normal. When the piece finally stands in our showroom, it looks like it always existed. That is the point.
What this means for you
Products made this way cost more than mass-produced alternatives. They also last longer, can be repaired, and keep their spare-part supply. A brass tap from a known workshop is a purchase you make once.
If you want to see the difference rather than read about it, visit us at Strehlgasse 22 in Zürich. Pick up a Ritz towel hook and a mass-market equivalent, and you will understand the rest of this article in about three seconds.
