Today’s winner of the 5th-birthday gift card is Dan Droker of CCI Automated Technologies, who sent me some great photos from the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. It cracks me up to imagine some of you embarrassing your spouses and kids by taking door photos during family outings. My family has begun to automatically sense when a door piques my interest, and they make themselves scarce. Except the little one who wants to be in every picture.
Dan also sent me a really nice comment (which in no way contributed to the random selection of his name as one of the gift card winners!)…
“Congratulations on reaching 5 years and such wide readership. I think the wealth of information you convey, the regularity of posts, the fun photos, and the way you involve your readers all contribute to making it so popular. Until recently, I worked for a 130+ year old locksmith company and learned a lot about hardware, but I feel like your site has added greatly to my knowledge and ability to speak intelligently with contractors and customers. Thank you for creating such a great resource.”
That one will go into the Smile File. 😀
Here are Dan’s photos from the zoo. Some elk-inspired hinges on an exterior gate:
A kid-sized door leading to the ZooMazium:
Here’s another photo of this door from Flickr (from sfgamchick):
And beautiful bronze door pulls:
As I looked at the door pulls I thought it would be interesting and educational to ask you all where you would buy custom pulls like this. And then I accidentally found the artist who made these – Laurel Marie Hagner of Glassometry Studios. There is one other set of pulls on her ZooMazium page.
I know Tice Industries is a good source for all types of custom hardware. If you know of other resources, leave a comment and I’ll create a list here for future reference.
Zoos are a great source of interesting doors and hardware. Check out this zoo exit, doors secured against lion access, another kid whose mom takes photos of her with hardware (not me this time!), or a dutch door for a giraffe.
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I have been searching for a copy of the Schlage “handcrafted” knobs catalog. The zodiac, lions head, and others. A unique time in Schlage history.
That would be a cool catalog to have! I have never seen one, but I’ve run across photos of those knobs…here’s the zodiac (horribly cool!) in the Antique Doorknob Collectors’ newsletter: http://www.antiquedoorknobs.org/Newsletters/047_May-Jun1991.pdf
And a sample on eBay for only $9,995! http://www.ebay.com/itm/ARCHITECTURAL-SCHLAGE-LOCK-SOLID-BRASS-HOROSCOPE-SYMBOLS-RARE-FIND-/331133727016?pt=Architectural_Garden&hash=item4d191bb128
Years ago we found a local sculptor who did half a dozen bronze pulls for a bank project. The pair of pulls came together to form the bank logo in a one foot square. Very cool but shortly after the project was completed the bank went under. I often wonder what happened to those chunks of bronze!
I’ll bet they were melted down long ago!
Actually Schlage’s sister company in France, Bricard, has a separate unit called Art. It’s a business that successfully continues to grow by offering bespoke door handles, door knobs etc for installations across the world. Recent projects have included hardware for clients in Russia as well as China. The website is http://www.bricard-art.com/uk/ for the English version.
Thanks Peter!