So many of our impressive doors are on churches, and interestingly, there seems to be few stylistic boundaries for the Church … any church! This is the entrance to a modern Catholic Church in Munich, and really creates a defined, calming and soulful theme for the entire building. The half-seen reflections in the door and front wall are a lovely metaphor for the grabs of truth that church attendees are trying to find, while the blue should have a calming effect … although it is definitely vibrant enough not to send people to sleep!

Our first thought is that a heavy door like this would need a really heavy duty knob! Then our second thought was that, actually a really heavy door like this particular one wouldn’t need a knob at all… Perhaps a sledgehammer would suffice?

This is a bit of a different shot for a blog about doors and door furniture … considering that neither is actually contained in the photo! But sometimes life is just as much about what is not seen as what can be. In this photo, we are at the door … or perhaps we are the door? Who knows. The beauty of a great black and white shot like this though, is that it makes you feel that you are actually in a colourless world, but one which is just as rich and vivid for all its different shades of grey as our Technicolor world is. Deep musings for a knob blog, eh? Photo credits: Il était une port…...

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...

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