13 colors from Kohler in 1972 — gimme Tiger Lily, Antique Red, and Fresh Green, please!

“Tiger Lily” kitchen sinks, “Antique Red” bathtubs, “Fresh Green” toilets — and new for Kohler in 1972, “Black Black”, too. The late 1960s heading into the early 1970s were chock full of interesting colors for bathroom and kitchen plumbing fixtures. These are some of my favorite colors ever — “Tiger Lily” orange, yes! — and don’t forget: Harvest Gold and Avocado galore. Let’s take a look at 15 photos from a Kohler catalog I recently added to my collection.First off, let’s get the color names:

That said, Google can’t read words in photos, so here’s the list:

Available on all products:

• Kohler Mexican Sand
• Kohler Peachblow
• Kohler Harvest Gold
• Kohler Avocado
• Kohler Cerulean Blue
• Kohler Fresh Green, introduced in 1971
• Kohler New Orleans Blue

Available on selected products:

• Kohler Black Black, new for 1972
• Kohler Coppertone 
• Kohler Antique Red
• Kohler Tiger Lily 
• Kohler Expresso 
• Kohler Blueberry 

Now let’s look at some of the colors in action:

Kohler “Black Black”, new for 1972.

Above: My favorite, Tiger Lily, is shown in the “Trieste” kitchen sink. I also spy Coppertone on the “New Man’s Lav” and the “New Urbanite” sink is Harvest Gold.

I wonder how many kitchen sinks were sold in this color in America? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands?

Avocado Green must already have been a phenom, because there were three photos of products in the catalog. Including of: Urinals; no comment.

My catalog was mostly in black-and-white — it was a catalog for stores to order from, not a consumer-focused catalog. I’m featuring pretty much all the product photos in it.

Above: That the Kohler “Lady Vanity” in Mexican Sand, I’m pretty sure. Those Lady Vanities — and their countertpart, the Man’s Lav, were awesome. 

Above: I think the three photos above are all Cerulean Blue. The color is not identified.

Above: New Orleans blue is a deeper blue tnan Cerulean blue. The scan did not pick up the richness I see in the actual catalog image. 

Yikes, dig the poles — these were marketed as “stanchions” in sets of four. They included two stanchions with interior water tubing and shower arms.

I’ve seen this sanchioned bathtub in the wild [emphasis: wild!]:

I visited then wrote about this 1963 ‘Showgirl Chic” Palmer Krisel house when I spoke at Las Vegas Home & History Week. An incredible bathroom in an incredible house!

Back to the Kohler catalog: Peachblow shower insert… and a pair of bubblers. Yes, that’s what they call drinking fountains in Wisconsin, at least when I lived there many a moon ago.

Harvest Gold. And a Stangl wigstand in the photo shoot — I had one of those but I… dropped it.

Scrumptious, all of these colors.

If you had a time machine, which color would you choose for your new split level house?

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