For those of you that arrived at this post from the main site, this may seem a bit ‘duuuuhhh’ worthy - but for those of you that got to the blog direct from Google or another ad, prepare to be amazed and flabbergasted! The online shop has changed, and it’s all for the good . We’ve been in the process of re-doing the website for some time now - with the explosion of new and different suppliers we’ve had, the old product search methods we had were getting a bit unwieldy. However, the same popularity which made it unwieldy also made it quite tricky to redevelop. So while...

If you were one of those people that always imagined fairies at the bottom of the garden when you were a child … or that is fascinated with the physics and art of the stars and planets … you will be enchanted by the range of products from our newest supplier, Les Verreries de Brehat! Verreries de Brehat produce some absolutely stunning door knobs, that are quite different to anything else on the site. Each one is blown glass, and they include patterns from the fantastic, to the ethereal, to the classy, to the magical. The studio of Verreries de Brehat is on a small French island - a...

It is often said that the best ideas are the simplest ones … and this is true of one the simple but marvelous ideas of our new suppliers, Pasini Metals Production. We recently began stocking the PASS/Move into Design range, a range of different and very modern handles createdby Daniela Seminara for Pasini Metals Productions, a company that has been producing brass handles for over 40 years. The old brass knob or lever certainly gets a new lease of life in the PASS range - the focus of innovation here is not so much the look of the handle, but the function. The French certainly created handles...

No, this blog is not about what happens when a group of ants and houseflies gather on your doorknob, and start talking about whether it is better to have a million eyes, or to be able to lift a hundred times your own weight. (We all know it is better to be able to lift a hundred times your own weight!!) Door knobs have been dragged into the public arena in the UK, where the government is planning to establish an ID card system for all private citizens, using their biometric details. Sounds scarily like something out of Terminator 2, doesn’t it?! Anti-ID card campaigners are putting up posters...

It really is amazing what people think of … while the world has given us some extremely useful inventions: like the wheel, the toaster and the electric nose hair puller, it has also given us some not-so-useful ones. These retractable doorknobs are possibly one of them! Another one of the many things that makes me wish that someone had thought of all the starving, homeless people in the world before deciding that what the world really needed was … These doorknobs by Yanko Design, which are supposed to provide extra security by retracting after you leave the house. Burglars cannot enter (ahem!!!),...

Poor old doorknobs often get quite a bad rap. We are culpable for contributing to it ourselves … blog posts report on the footpull used to avoid germy bathroom doors (where 34% of men, and 12% of women don’t wash their hands!), and also on the bactericidal properties of brass. But we only just recently came across a wealth of information on other ways and means people have of avoiding horrible, horrible public door knobs … which are nothing like your gorgeous home ones! There are the old standbys – low tech but high wastage methods like using a paper towel to touch the actual doorknob....

In the US town of Naples, in Florida, drugs have been turned (indirectly!) into doorknobs, by socially responsible police policies. They have not managed to compress any fine white powders into anything sturdy enough to open a door with … although psychedelic mushrooms are already sort of doorknob shaped, aren’t they?! What has actually happened is that a fund of money confiscated from arrested drug dealers has been used to further safety in the area. As a coastal town, it is to be expected (however sadly and unfortunately), that the drowning rate is higher here than in landlocked areas....

Our knockers are set to be used for the new film version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol … which many of us probably know best from the Disney version with as Ebenezer Scrooge (hmm, I wonder where Disney managed to come up with that Christian name for their duck?!!). The film is set for release in 2009… with Jim Carrey playing Ebenezer Scrooge, we are not sure whether the movie will be of the serious, poetic sort, or the Christmas Grinch sort. Either way, it will have some serious, genuine antique door furniture in it! Our locks are being modelled for use in the character Scrooge’s...

Well, we have said it before, that you only know that something has real value when somebody else in the world thinks it is worth stealing! It has been reported that gangs across Britain have been stealing brass and other items – tens of millions of pounds worth – in order to feed a growing demand for metals in India and China, as their construction industries boom. We are not talking about a few isolated incidents here, of things that are unusual to steal, but not inconceivable (like, for instance, a traditional and well-made door knob!). Apparently these thefts are on an absolutely huge scale...

A terrible tale of door knob abuse from the heart of Missisippi (when will they learn?!!), published here. Charlotte Wolff had a bit of a security habit – a near obsession with having locks and deadbolts on all of her doors, something that can be attributed to the horror movie industry! If they were smart, the security and horror movie industry would have all kinds of product placements and partnerships going :-). She locked herself in the laundry one night, and found that the only way she could think of to get out was to beat her poor door knob to death with a hammer … We nearly cried! Photo...