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Design in the Doorknobs

By Rain Noe - February 17, 2011

in Object Culture

If you doubt the decline of craft, tell me what the doorknobs in your house look like. Can you even remember, offhand? Those things that you touch every day to get into your home and your bedroom? I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it's a boring piece of smooth metal.

In contrast, doorknobs used to see an almost absurd amount of attention lavished on them by a craftsman:

Writes Woodworking Us' Jesse Akre in an article on the subject, "...There was a time when homeowners couldn't wait to trade in their ornate knobs for faceless ones with smooth finishes of nickel, copper and brass. The engraved faces and glistening glass of the old style of door knobs was suddenly passé and thousands of door knobs ended up in the garbage dumps of cities throughout the world." Now there's a bit of a revival, with modern manufacturers producing old-style replicas and a burgeoning antique doorknob market popping up.

Even casual Google Image browsing will present you with an astonishing variety of doorknob forms and detailing in brass, bronze, copper, silver, porcelain, glass, you name it. (And that's not even getting into door hinges, strike plates, and door knockers, entire categories in their own right.) Get in there and browse.

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Sven

13 years ago

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Beautiful Furniture ... unfortunately there is hardly suitable wooden buildings where one can still find these.

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Max

13 years ago

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the Anthropologist did an amazing profile on P.E. Guerin, an amazing NYC decorative hardware company that has been hand making similar products since 1857. Definitely worth checking out to see how it's all made:

http://theanthropologist.net/#/PEGuerin/Craft/
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