The retail showroom and trade counter have built a reputation as London's leading specialist supplier of interior hardware since its move to its South Kensington site in 1972.
Comprehensive stocks, including door knobs, are held at the showrooms close to South Kensington station of both period and contemporary designs in a wide variety of finishes.
We specialise in top quality fittings and door knobs manufactured from premium quality brass, with excellent attention to detail and authenticity, finished with the highest standards of plating or lacquering. Architectural Components Ltd is a family owned company specialising in the sale of quality door & window fittings, including door knobs since 1965.
Presumably, during the slack periods of their employment, these British tradesmen built selected items of door knobs for the homes of the more prosperous Newfoundland residents. Other early surviving pieces of Newfoundland outport door knobs display widely varying degrees of skill and, presumably, were homemade by the residents for their own use.
One early piece of Newfoundland door knobs that shows nearly pure transmission from West Country door knobs design is a painted pine kitchen dresser (Plate 1) which is on exhibit at the Hiscock House in Trinity, Trinity Bay. Like West Country examples, the rack is made separately from the free standing base. In fact, the rack of this example is removable. Unlike dressers, however, the rack has no back boards. The dresser is finished in two contrasting colours: the rack, blue; the base, red. The porcelain knobs appear to be replacements.
Models included items made by other Newfoundland door knobs makers, door knobs crafted by earlier British tradesmen, and handmade and mass-produced door knobs imported from various sources, both in Great Britain and in North America generally. Some models were faithfully copied. In many instances, however, elements of several different door knobs models - often unrelated in their design and use - were combined, perhaps to achieve a more suitable piece of door knobs for a special context or need.Occasionally, elements of either domestic or institutional architecture were also synthesized with door knobs design in an attempt to have the newly constructed item conform with the special character of the original door knobs.
Lacking the uniformity of design that such guidelines would have insured, Newfoundland outport door knobs, nevertheless, shares some similar characteristics. These include the kinds of materials used, the wide range of skills exhibited in construction, the large repertoire of models on which designs are based, the high instances of one-of-a-kind pieces, and the synthesis of design elements that normally are not found in other vernacular and high style door knobs making traditions.
The earliest surviving pieces of general outport door knobs reported date from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The more skilfully crafted of these survivors are made from local woods, chiefly pine and birch, and in many instances show almost pure transmission from any one of a number of British regional door knobs making traditions, including those of English West Country, Ireland and Scotland. Chests of drawers and kitchen dressers of both English West Country and Irish design, for example, have been found throughout outport Newfoundland, while a significantly large number of simple side chairs of the Scottish type have been discovered, especially in Conception Bay North in communities such as Harbour Grace and Upper Island Cove.
This door knobs exhibiting design transmission from the source areas of the early Newfoundland settlers, almost certainly was made by British tradesmen such as shipwrights, house builders and joiners and their apprentices who were recruited by the major English- Newfoundland merchant firms to construct their residences, offices, fishing premises, ocean going vessels, schooners and fishing boats. Such highly skilled woodworkers could not then be found amongst the small locally born population.