Wow! What a lot of security – such thick wood, such huge hinges, and so many metal studs … for a door that you could squeeze underneath if you were halfway fit!
You can see how strong the malleable iron that the hinges are made of is … while the doors are obviously sagging, the metal hinges are still straight as dies. Any of the malleable iron hardware that comes from our site is just as strong.
So they are still making them like they used to! This door is on the Palais des papes, in Avignon, France.

Photo credits: Old door by Gilles

While we have already looked at Door County, Wisconsin’s fascinating if stinky, traditional ‘fish boil’ (shudder!), the history of the place’s name is actually quite romantic and fascinating also!

The county is named after the Door Peninsula, which runs alongside it. The strait of ocean between this peninsula and Washington Island is apparently notorious for being a very dangerous little piece of sea. It is now ‘littered with shipwrecks’, and early French explorers gave it the gorgeous name ‘Porte des Morts Passage’, or the Door to the Way to Death … or even more simply, Death’s Door.

So, are the people of Door County the gatekeepers to Heaven and Hell?! And for you personally, if you were sent to a place that reveres fish boiling, would you be going to heaven or hell? An interesting addendum to the idea of the county being a sort of purgatory is that physically, it actually has very thin soil … in up to 40% of the county, there is less than three feet of digging before you get to the bedrock. Lucky that ocean trade is thriving here, because horticulture would not be an easy task under these conditions.

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Sometimes … very, very rarely … we find an old door that might have something taken away from it if it was restored, polished, sanded and had its handles and hardware replaced. This one is one of those doors – there is a certain beauty in its rawness, the weathering and scratching, and the random old cog that is acting as a backplate for the handle. The cog is a bit of a metaphor, even – it is something that is purely functional, not made to impress by any stretch of the imagination. Just like this door – a bit of refreshing honesty!

Photo credits: Old Door by Erik Stewart