This gorgeous door handle is a truly interactive experience! It comes from Naomi Thellier de Poncheville’s portfolio, and while it is definitely clever, we think one of its best aspects is the way it turns cleverness into a very visceral experience of feeling welcomed! Beautiful.

We often see the hand motif in older knockers, where a fist grasps the ring for you to knock with, and we also have seen various fist shaped knockers … which we imagine would feel a little like countering a punch in a martial arts class … or even a pub brawl. This hand-le has a lovely welcoming feel though. The hand is also very modern … much of the detail in the hand’s shaping would most likely not have been possible to recreate in the times where many of our knobs and knockers were made.

Although, to turn this knob, I’m sure you might still feel as if you were in a martial arts class … or perhaps back in primary school, giving ‘Chinese burns’!!

Photo credits: Naomi Thellier de Poncheville

It often seems that time and technology are moving faster than we can keep up with … and this phenomenon seems to accelerate more every year, to eventually be constantly bemoaned by our grandparents and other elderly people who stop to talk to you while you are waiting for a bus!

But it seems that some architects were just a bit too keenly aware of this phenomenon, and planned quite a bit further ahead than they needed to. When London’s Barbican Arts Centre was built, the architects left out a front door. Why? Because they believed that in the not-too-distant future, nobody would be walking into the centre – they would fly to the carpark in their bubble car, take the lift down to the floor that they needed, and then return to the roof to take off home!

However, we can definitely attest to the fact that doors and door knobs have stayed fairly true to form for hundreds of years … differing mostly in style and materials, and not so much in the fact of whether they were used or not, due to flying transportation!

Photo credits: Batman Returns But Robin Flew Away by Graham Colton

How many door and drawer handles or knobs would you guess you touch in the average day?

Well, the internet is a wide and wonderful world unto itself, and one research oriented soul decided to actually find out! This seemingly simple, but actually very deep (and fun!) research project had only the criteria that every door or drawer handle or knob that the person used in a day, had to be photographed and recorded. Aside from the obvious quandaries of whether to count both sides of a door handle, and whether to count both getting in and out of a car, if you can not get caught up in the mathematics and science of it, he did note that it really helped him to focus on the here and now – what he was actually doing, and not what he was planning or about to do (in the context of the door handles, at least). Interestingly, this is one of the main aims of Buddhists – to focus on what one is actually doing right at every single moment. And I’m guessing that this sort of project wouldn’t be out of our scope either, as we get to photograph all of the gorgeous knobs that we have been filling our homes with!

You could try this sort of thing yourself, at home, as I did, only without the photographic record. Compare all of the different sorts of handles, how they feel and turn, how they operate (up/down or rotating), and how they look. When I tried it, I resolved to both clean and replace quite a few of my door knobs! Maybe when I try it on my floors tomorrow, they will also get a bit of the attention they have been lacking in…!

Photo credits: Reach by Fernando de Sousa

My favourite tale of door knocking is The Raven, by Edgar Allen Poe. It was written in 1845, when door knockers had definitely become commonplace – but they just don’t convey the same mystery, and wouldn’t allow the narrator the excuse that his visitor “so gently … came tapping”!
What a beautiful study in suspense and uncertainty, and the rhythm of the poem supports the racing of his mind and his feelings of terror. So, grab a door knocker so that should you hear a faint tapping, you know it is no innocent visitor … here are the first four verses of The Raven.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
” ‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow, sorrow for the lost Lenore,.
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore,
Nameless here forevermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
” ‘Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door,
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door.
This it is, and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you.” Here I opened wide the door;—
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Photo credits: Raven by Barry Merluzzo

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 work is The Thinker, with which most everybody is visually familiar. And he also created plenty of two dimensional art, in the form of sketches and paintings. However, he did have the chance occasionally to indulge his love of integrating sculpture and architecture. As well as the Medusa head knocker, he was commissioned to create wall-sculptures – friezes – in the Champs Elysees theater in 1913. He created sculptures to represent Tragedy, Music, Dance, Comedy and the Muses—all different aspects of theatre.

A different interpretation of his fascination with melding sculpture and architecture is seen in the fact that he felt that sculpted art was innately connected to its surroundings – whether they were buildings or open-air spaces. Some of his great works in this area included his Monument to the Defenders of Montauban (Montauban was his town of birth), and the Monument to General Alvear in Argentina.

He was contemporary enough to have access to modern techniques and flexibility, and antique enough to have a whole lot of class…

Photo credits: The Great Warrior of Montauban