Sightings of the Hyperborean Age

I am a fan of what my brother calls “house porn.” I could spend hours going through stacks of House Beautiful and Architectural Digest–and I have. So when a list of 50 Perfect Powder Rooms showed up in my inbox , I had to peek. There are some lovely ones, of course, but #26 prompted the following snippet:

A dark bronze vessel served as the sink. Its handles and ornate carvings made it better suited to catching the blood of a human sacrifice than to Ethan washing his hands in the twenty-second...