You can just imagine these knockers as a couple of grumpy old men, sitting at the side of a river fishing… or sitting on their porch perhaps whittling some wood or smoking a pipe! Those of you with the traditionally ubiquitous lion’s head knocker can also be grateful that not every doorknocker has this amount of animation or personality. When Sarah has to pinch the door knocker’s nose shut to get the ring back in, you can see how you might have a bit of trouble doing that with a live lion’s head – with metal teeth, nonetheless!

It is possible to buy these knockers online, but they don’t strictly fit the antique theme that many of you reading our blog will be looking for. They may be a cute way for your kids to join in on your fascination with antiques and architectural classics, though. If you get sick of hearing “Knock, and the door shall open”, just take the batteries out!

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Well, the urban legend of the nail sticking up out of the floor holding up a chandelier in a room below (or you can substitute wires) may just have some truth about it – but by gosh, it sure isn’t scary!

Unlike the one about the murderer in the back seat of the car, or the tapping at the window, this one is just a little bit pointless. The (scary) story goes, that there were a pair of sisters who were never allowed to touch a nail sticking out of their parents’ bedroom floor, but were not told why. One morning they came in to their parents’ bedroom to find them dead mysteriously, and the superstitious daughters, who had listened to too many urban legends, believe that it was something to do with the nail. They work up the courage to pull it out, and find that it was holding up a chandelier in the apartment below theirs, which fell on their downstairs neighbor.

There are also several versions circulating where newlyweds, or travelers to Moscow, see wires under a rug in their room, believe they are for a bug, and cut them – dropping chandeliers of various impressive sizes into rooms below.

There are several physical limitations to the truth of these stories: the most notable being that you could not mount a huge chandelier to a roof with wires alone – if they did stick out of the floor of the room above, and were cut, they should only stop incandescent lights coming on…

It is possible that someone may have somehow attached a chandelier so that the fastening nut or nail stuck out of the floor above – but only if they were a bit of a weekend handyman, and were perhaps basing their knowledge of how chandeliers should be attached on this myth! In any case, most that have chandeliers have spent too much money on them to fasten them so insecurely, and we hope that licensed builders and electricians have more sense … 

Photo credits: Under the carpet by Agnieszka Mieszczak

When you look at the very extensive, very intricate, and very well-made lighting products in our antiques range, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that possibly the most authentic antique light is DIY, free and available to all at the low-low price of nothing - the simple campfire. The creation of fire is recognized as one of humankind’s first and most important steps towards where we are today – but recognized by few as the most authentic of antique lamps!! Lighting has progressed through various stages throughout history to come to where it is now, with a huge range of lighting options in hundreds of categories and types, and also at different levels of artistic value. Where did it all start, and how did the journey get us here?

The use of fire for light would have been so important in our evolution – imagine the winter months, before artificial light was created. There wouldn’t have been much you could do except sleep at the times when the moon had waned and the sun went down – and without either reverse-cycle heater and airconditioners, or fire, even sleeping would have been quite cold and uncomfy! Fire provided a huge opportunity to extend the day’s activities past daylight hours, without doing too much waste-of-time sleeping! At the Cradle of Humankind, evidence for the existence of fire from up to 1.8 million years ago exists. One of the other activities we first used fire for was in landscape management – before the advent of gorgeous home furnishings, we just had to make do!

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As a child, I always wanted to pull out a loose tooth with a piece of string tied to a doorknob, and the other end tied to my tooth. I’m sure everyone who heard about this as a kid felt the same way! However, it wasn’t just me that chickened out of having it done, it was also my loving mother. In this video, 5 year old Morgan has the full support of her parents for having her tooth pulled by the door, and begins with the heart of a lion… breaking point comes, though, when she realizes that she can’t just gently shut the door and have the tooth fall out, and that Mum or Dad has to actually slam it shut. If you have kids, you’ll also recognize that gorgeous little foot-stamp shuffle at about a minute and a half in, that is universal to children who are doing something that they don’t want to!

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