Some of you may have been known, perhaps once, to have struggled with opening a jar. Some females, and even some males … ! Well, imagine how annoying it would be if that same sort of effort and strength was required from you just to open closed doors in your own house. It’d be a pain in the butt, and that is why people have developed door knob grips. You don’t need to change all of your round handles to lever handles, either because you or someone staying with you is having trouble opening the door. That means you don’t have to give up your gorgeous antique ones either! Door knob grips...

Have a guess what the most famous door in the UK might open onto. Perhaps the UK’s most beautiful woman? Perhaps … Liam Gallagher of Oasis? Perhaps it’s the door to the Chief’s office in The Bill? Well, that would be close to the most famous door in the UK! But this one has certainly seen many more people with much more power and influence than that one – it is Number 10 Downing Street, London , SW1A 2AA. It opens onto the British Prime Minister’s home, offices, meeting rooms and dining rooms. For such an important door, it is really very nondescript, if much cleaner and better-looked...

Brass is one of the more common materials for your old home’s furnishings and hardware to be made of. Back in the day (when your grand dad was but a twinkle in his pop’s eye), it was the cheapest, most readily available and most suitable metal for creating these pieces. Coincidentally, it also looks lovely when it is aged! Shiny new brass can look a little bit like it came from a thrift store, or was just the cheap option when you went to the furniture store to replace your door handles, your knockers or your latches. The other thing about getting brass objects which are new and shiny is that...

Antoine Bourdelle created the beautiful Medusa head knocker from the May 18 blog post, and we found a promising quote from him in there, that he believed that sculpture was most beautiful when it was integrated into architecture. But unfortunately, he must not have had a chance to do much architectural sculpting in his lifetime, because most of his art is well executed and touching… but pretty much stand-alone art. He created masks of Beethoven from around 1888 until his death in 1929 – if you are going to do something, you may as well do it properly! He studied under Rodin, whose most famous...

One of the oldest door knockers known to mankind is this one from the town of Olynthos in Ancient Macedonia, which has been dated at manufacture sometime around 340-430 BC. Nearly two and a half thousand years ago! The knocker is quite well made, considering the tools they would have had at the time to cast metal and so forth. This would have been on the door of one of the wealthiest people in the town … very lucky that we don’t have to be the richest person in our suburb or town to own a little bit of class like this! You can expect the knockers that we sell here to be standing in two and...

You will all be starting to think that we have misspelt our company name on the site, and that it is really Artchitectural Classics – or perhaps that we are on the payroll of the UK Centre for the Arts – with yet another post on architecture-related art. Luminox in Oxford a couple of months ago is the subject. Like the Salt Mines in Poland, or the Ice hotel in Sweden complete with chandeliers, this post makes you wish you had been there… It was the creation of a French artist, Carabosse, and basically involved turning off all electric light to Oxford Square from around 7pm, and lighting...

Well! The BBC does have a sense of humour, of sorts … Just kidding, you’re great! In their h2g2 offshoot site, under The Guide to Life, the Universe and Everything (the name is an adapted version of Douglas Adams’ book of similar title), they have a guide to knocking on doors! Alex Ashman has managed to track down an impressive grand total of fifteen reasons that somebody might knock on a door – for your reference and satisfaction of curiosity here they are (thankyou Alex): The following are times when it is usually appropriate to knock on a door: As a way of asking to enter through the...

Locks are a precision instrument, and mortice locks are one of the trickier varieties to maintain and fit! However, that makes it that much more satisfying when you fit one that works properly. Mortice locks are used for most inside doors, which makes it not so imperative that you do an excellent job, as there really isn’t a security issue. Remember to measure twice and cut once, and you can’t go too far wrong! The first step is to decide how high up the door you want the lock to be – this will depend on whether children need to be able to open it … or need to be unable to open it! Put...