For those of you that have bought door furniture from Architectural Classics during the year, or have been reading our blog, thank you for your support and interest! Since you are all part of the extended family, we thought we’d let you know what we are doing over the holidays.
Personally, I’ll be looking after a mewling little milk-goblin (that is, a newborn baby!) … amid the usual Christmas presents, relaxing, talking to friends and family, and trying to find what my chickens and guinea pigs will like best for Christmas! I am staying at home in Australia this year.

In fact, most of the staff are sticking around home in Ireland … like most people in the world, Christmas is a good excuse to rest and relax and just switch off an overtired part of the brain. Voytec is lucky enough to have his family coming over from Poland, to a holiday house in Kerry, near the ocean. Wish for good weather for them! And also for Lin, who will be mountain climbing in the Wicklow mountains.
Niall (Architectural Classics’ founder), the voice you will hear talking about the products on the site, is the only one going far from home – he has a trip to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam planned. He obviously misses summer!

We hope all of you have a safe, happy, relaxing and refreshing Christmas and New Year break, whatever you are doing. We’ll chat with you again in 2008!

Photo credits: Have yourselves a Merry little Christmas! by Peggy

Believe it or not, at Architectural Classics we haven’t just been sitting around, surfing the web looking for cool antique door furniture and cats that can open doors. We have actually been quite busy! Yes Mum, I promise that’s why I haven’t called…

Over 2007 we have:

Spent time at the Spring Home and Garden Show in Dublin, where the most popular items this years were our light switches. Plenty of people were enthralled with the Bakelite range, the jelly-mould range, and the ceramic range. Crystal was also a popular material here this year – which is interesting, given that on St Pats Day when Ireland and Italy played rugby, most of the crowd were shouting like punters at the pub and swearing like troopers off-duty! Can you imagine these same people counting out notes for a crystal escutcheon and carefully carrying it home?! A gorgeous sight!!

Newsweek featured one of our Louis XIV style knobs in their magazine: and also acknowledged what we have been saying for ages (come on!), that as your first tactile experience with a room, a door knob is a huge part of the impression you form of a house or room. Nerny ner, told them so!

(more…)

There are many superstitions associated with doors … and a few with door furniture as well! One of these I have a personal interest in, as a breeding member of the species – but however strange and terrible giving birth might be, I’m not sure that I believe this one enough to make sure I follow it on D-Day!

This old superstition about doors is that you must unlock every door in the house when giving birth, to make an easier labour. The symbolism is pretty obvious … so obvious in fact, that it is better not too think about it for too long! But I just have a couple of questions about this:

- What if you give birth in a hospital? Does every door in the hospital have to be unlocked? Does that include the prescription drugs cabinets?
- Or, if you give birth in a hospital, do you still have to unlock every door in your own home, because that closely symbolizes yourself? Would the advantage of having an easier labour be swallowed up eventually by the fact that when you got your baby home, all of its things had been pinched by opportunists passing by?
- Finally, every lock in the house, or just the ones on doors (the ones that things come through…!)

This superstition might go some way to explaining people’s olden day fascination with having lions on their doors – they needed something to scare away thieves while the doors were unlocked, while they were away giving birth so often!

Photo credits: Lil Sport by Angela Marvel

This photo was really highly praised on Flickr … and truthfully, it is a beautiful shot. I don’t know how it makes you feel – but it makes me a little uneasy, like I am staring at a madman’s cell, or something! It could easily be a setting in an arthouse horror movie. The door is gorgeous, and the marble-looking tiles on the floor are decadent, but the white, white walls, the floor which is clean enough to eat off every inch, and the hundreds of bolts in the door give it away. It feels like the bench to the left might be the insane person’s bed, where they would spend night after uncomfortable, cramped night … but at least it tells a story, which is much better than just leaving everyone pretty much unmoved.

Beautiful, in one of those horrifying sorts of ways!

Photo credits: Old Door by Ahmed Rabea

This door knocker is from Verona … when you look at it from a ways back, it could easily be a benevolent guardian angel, poised above your bed, making sure that no harm comes to you while you are asleep. When you have a closer look though, you start to notice that the face is a little bit frowny… there is a second face underneath the angel, which also looks like it might rather eat you while you were asleep, than prevent anything else from doing so. And what guardian angel has other creatures growing from the tips of its wings? It starts to look more and more infernal the closer you look.

It is from the city that Romeo and Juliet lived in … perhaps it is the angel of misfortune that pursued them. It does have its own magnetism and strange sort of beauty, nevertheless!

Photo credits: Verona by Andy Marshall