Dezeen promotion: as German company Hansgrohe turns 120 years old this year, Dezeen looks back at some of its most important product innovations and how they have helped to shape the bathroom of today.
Today, Hansgrohe is a company with 33 subsidiaries, 22 sales offices and roughly 4,700 employees all over the world.
However, when it was founded on 15 June 1901 by entrepreneur Hans Grohe, it was a three-man operation that pressed metal products in the small Black Forest town of Schiltach in southwestern Germany ? the same town that the company's headquarters is based today.
It was at this time, at the turn of the 20th century, that the private household bathroom came into fashion. Recognising that the shower was an affordable alternative to the more expensive process of taking baths, Hans Grohe began specialising entirely in metal goods for the sanitation section. Hansgrohe's tin hand shower with porcelain handle was made in 1928
The following decades were dedicated to the further development of his showers which would go on to have a significant influence on future showering culture.
Hansgrohe's first breakthrough shower product ? a hand tin shower with a porcelain handle ? was born in 1928. At the time, it provided a convenient alternative to the then-customary overhead shower and made showering affordable for many households for the first time.
The Excentra waste and overflow set was designed in 1934
Excentra, a chrome-plated, automatic waste and overflow set for the b...