You may have noticed recently in some of our product descriptions (if you have been a diligent renovator!), that many of them advise on what sorts of rooms particular pieces will work best in. The delicate and detailed feminine pieces are often linked with rooms filled with flowers and lace – the bold, strong malleable iron and modernist pieces are linked with sparse rooms filled with dark colours and leathery or knobbled fabrics. But! You don’t necessarily need to have those sorts of rooms already in your house to enjoy the pieces … of course you can create your own individual ideas in your home space, but the site of the month also gives you an invaluable resource for finding the sorts of surrounding pieces that are suggested. Homebug has an uncanny knock for finding beautiful, artistically designed homewares, putting them together in colour groups that make you feel like you’re in a lolly shop, and giving you the exact place you can purchase them all from. Not to mention implanting the colourful and exotic seeds of design ideas in your own head!

You’ll find things like adorable fabrics from Japan – great if you have an Oriental style home, or even a period style with Oriental influences, like Victorian. There are awesome sofas, as well as wooden benches, art for your walls, chairs from the chunky to the cheap, cute kitchen accessories, anything to do with books, and other soft furnishings and textiles. Plus a heap more …

A lot of the pieces in here are quite modern, or at least modernist :-). Best for those of you that have homes from the early part of the century, or slightly before. Think Bauhaus, Adam Style, Victorian, and 20s or 30s homes. However, if you have an eye for design, colour and shape, you’ll no doubt enjoy looking over everything here whether or not it will end up in your own home!

Photo credits: Caldwell Beebe via Desire to Inspire by homebug

Poor old copper – it’s very name is a insult in some circles. Although admittedly not in the most refined and sophisticated circles! But no matter what circle, square, triangle or otherwise you move in, if your period style home favours copper furnishings and infrastructure, we’ve put together a handy reference guide for the metal – its history, personality type, care and uses.

Copper is uncommon among building metals, in that it is one of the few ‘pure’ metals used in building. Alloys are usually favoured over ‘pure’ metals (those made up of only one element), because why would you go with something natural when you can muck around a little bit, have a few fun explosions, and create something with properties more exactly suited to your purpose?! Seriously though, it is generally easier to make something to your exact specifications when you can add a little of this and a little of that. This is what gives it such a long history – before humans had the technology or tools to mix metals together, they could easily find copper lying about in the countryside, bang it a little bit and have something they could call a homeware or a tool. It’s total history of use by humans is known to be at least 10,000 years, and smelted copper has been found that has been dated at around 5,000 years old. The oldest known copper artifact was sadly an implement of hurt, death and destruction – a copper mace head.

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You can see where this door once had a knocker on it, by the indentation below the handle, and the metal circle that is perhaps a striker plate – although not very well positioned, by the dents!
So perhaps this handle is not quite as old as it looks, and maybe just a bit dirty…
The handle being newer fits in well stylistically – it is definitely an old handle, but so unusual that you wouldn’t expect it to be extremely old. The uniquely engraved back plate, the upward-facing hand, and the miscellaneous bar are all just a bit different to be extremely old.
But beautiful, nonetheless!

Photo credits: Door handle by Sveta Bogomolova

One of the more important decisions that you will make when doing a traditional renovation is whether to purchase the same hardware for every room of your house, or to mix and match … and then just how eclectic you can be with your choice of handles!

In an Oklahoma newspaper, Mi-Ling Stone Poole, the resident interior designer, gives some very pertinent advice on the topic. The first thing she notes is that the main doors to your house should be in the same metal, and preferably the same style… although, her advice is not targeted specifically to people doing period style renovations. In your case, I would think it is much more important to keep things the same style, or stylistic period, than it is that they are in the same metal … Although, if you want to do both, then our range of luxury handles and hardware includes a massive number of pieces where you can choose from a total of 19 different metals (like a kid in a candy store!). There are gorgeously exotic choices like oil-rubbed bronze, old copper (a beautiful rosy colour), patinated brass for that never-have-to-clean convenience (gotta love it!), or even the more modern polished chrome. One thing to remember in choosing your metals though, is that if you decide to update some knobs later on, or the handles in high traffic areas get worn, then the more unusual the finish the less likely you are to get an exact match, ten years down the track. Brass and nickel are nice and traditional, and also nice and freely available!

One interesting thing that Mi-Ling mentions is that if the main doors to your house are in polished brass, then patinated brass or pewter (with similar component metals to brass) would certainly work well as highlight pieces. These could perhaps be on cupboard doors or other smaller doors, to add a bit of variation and accent to that plain old brass.

She is a wise, wise woman … (!), and another sound piece of advice from Mi-Ling is that if your taste in hardware runs to the eccentric, then it is a safe bet to keep your old door handles if you are going to resell your house in the future. Not only do the new owners not have to be offended by your towering, clunking antiques … you don’t have to let go of the pieces you have found and cherished for your doors.

The main message is obvious, and just makes sense – while you don’t need to be rigidly bound to echo the door knob that is on your front door throughout your home, you do need to go into your hardware buying spree with a plan … and then contingency plans! Almost like going into battle … something that the historians among you traditional renovators will appreciate :-)

Photo credits: Cebra Voyerista by Cati Kaoe, Doors of Jogya by Farl

Editors in Irish Independent have featured us in their ‘Top Shop’ section. Thanks for that guys!