When it comes to articles, the BBC’s h2g2 site is like a comic strip version of about.com – with a definite British twist of lime in the humour. This article about door decoration goes a little beyond the pure comedy value of some of the articles (like the one about how to knock on doors!), and you can actually get a bit of insight and use out of the author’s writing… Door decorations, according to the article, range from the simple nameplate, to simple decorations like quotes or photos, to cartoons depicting bitter office workers (rings so true!), to family-oriented door decoration. I’d...

There are two camps of antique-lovers in the world, we have found … they are both just as passionate as each other in their love of the old, but don’t quite agree on how to keep and display their antiques. In the silver corner, wearing the bright and shiny trunks, and weighing in at 142 pounds, we have the ‘New-Antiquarians … arians…arians’! These guys love old things, but also love their old things to look like new, and be nice and clean. The dirt of the ages is not what they had in mind when they started their collections! Then, in the dark and musty corner, in the mellow patinated...

Well, the first things you’ll need are a drill set, some safety goggles, a welder … Nah, just kidding! Actually, we have an even easier, more multi-purposed solution to the worries of keeping your kids out of drawers that you don’t want them to have access to. Sheer genius … and I think we might, strangely enough, be the first people on the web to market this new brand of child-lock! It will be great value-adding for our antiques customers, we think, to be able to purchase their child locks in the same place as their gorgeous antique knobs. Now we only have to investigate the SPCA licence...

The Story Begins … At Architectural Classics, we love history … obviously! The opportunity recently came up to piece together some historical puzzles, return some history to its rightful spot, and look at some gorgeous photos of ancient Welsh architecture in the process. You can imagine the feeling in the office! We haven’t even needed coffee this week. It is a twisted tale indeed, but here is the story of this imposing, strong and masculine chandelier. Starting at the start … St Donat’s castle in Wales was built at a time unknown (how romantic :-), but the parts of it still standing...

Who knew that the immortal and omniscient B-52s, in their 80s anthem Love Shack, would write a line that not everyone could relate to?!!! Impossible for such genius Seriously though, not many people might have thought about the fact that different cultures view slamming doors or knocking loudly on doors differently… it is always the smaller things that affect you most when you are in an unfamiliar place. For a Thai student in Britain, the constant banging of doors around her living space is driving her understandably crazy! “…British students and wardens are so insensitive to banging...

Such a gorgeous, detailed, and artistic door and knocker! This lion’s head knocker is on the door of Cologne Cathedral, in Koln in Germany. It is far from the cathedral’s only feature though – the whole building has a history spanning the hundreds of years it took to build it, its ravages in several wars, and the illustrious contributors to the cathedral’s architecture. There are plenty of lions head knockers in our range, but this one stands out for its size, firstly. It is among the three largest cathedrals in the world, it has a bell which weighs 3.8 tonnes, and quires engineered to...

Here at Architectural Classics we often have gorgeous, very old antique door hardware … and the newer ones fall by the wayside a little. But we couldn’t go past these gorgeous frog door knobs! They are made with a light silver resin to look like alloy, and the backplates are created with both brass and bakelite rings for strength and endurance. Unfortunately, the only thing we can’t guarantee about them is that by kissing them, you will turn them into princes! Gosh knows what you would even do with two princes … they might end up fighting over you and slaying each other, and then you would...