English Bulldog Journey

 It is official we are now starting to make our dog and cat door accessories available for purchase online. Until now we have  eschewed direct online sales as we are a small company without  departments devoted to these tasks. By virtue of being small we cannot make large quantities of products, preferring to maintain a high level of quality by making only a small quantity of pieces. We are taking our first steps with the English Bulldog that can be purchased as a leash hook, door pull, single knob or door knocker all of which are easily installed using the basic tools and by following our installation guide.

 The Bulldog, also known as the English Bulldog or British Bulldog, is a dog breed that Martin Pierce grew up with. Martin’s dog, Sugar, was very typical of this breed being  hefty, muscular and with a somewhat squashed nose and wrinkled face. The breed is a descendant of the larger mastiffs which are said to have been introduced to England by the Romans. Whatever their ancestry this is one of my favorite breeds and feel their expressive jowls and wrinkles are well captured in Martin’s bronze sculptures.

At present the doorknob set can only be purchased by contacting us by email or phone as we need to ensure the set is correctly installed by a professional and the correct type of latch is supplied. While the simple tubular latch is easy  to install and is included in the door set customers will first need to check that their door stile is wide enough for the 3” backplate and assess whether their existing knob set has a square or rounded edge faceplate.

Boxer dog door knobs

Having officially launched our new collection of dog themed door hardware we wanted to share some of the background behind each dog breed.

We have four boxer dogs in our neighborhood with wonderful names, 2 are named Tank and Pistol, they are difficult to tell apart which given they are brothers is not too surprising. The other 2 are rescue boxers named Doctor and Dolly. Dr is a white boxer named after the well- known British show “Dr. Who” the other is named Dolly and as you probably guessed is a nod to Dolly Parton. My neighbor is a long- term fan of boxers and all his dogs have come from Boxer Rescue Los Angeles, a non-profit rescue center funded solely by private donations with a fully staffed kennel facility in the San Fernando Valley.

The creative end result of our neighborhood boxers  is a boxer head door knob set. The door knob exists as a functioning passageway set or can be used as a fixed door knob. The boxer head is also available as a simple door pull, or coat hook or as front door knocker. So far we have 8 breeds of dog but have 2 more on the design board which we hope to add by the end of this year or early part of next year.

All of the dog door knobs are made with the same eye for detail as our other lines of door hardware and made the same way using the lost wax method to create intricately detailed castings.

Different Door Knobs - One Door Set

We often get requests for mixed knob sets for our passageway door sets. If you are familiar with our site and catalogue you will know that the Netsuke collection allows you to mix and match our lizard, frog, rabbit, and bumble bee knobs. What is less obvious but just as creative an invention, is to mix the knobs from our Hedgerow and Willow collections. As all 3 collections have a nature theme, we feel the tree canopies of Hedgerow or the swirling leaf orb of Willow work well with the animals in Netsuke and their textural back-plates. The last image below shows how designer Bonnie J. McIntire paired the willow knob with the bark back-plate from the lizard collection.

A recent order by designer Hillary Zeiss went to the next level for both color and collection mix. The door set was created using a pea green frog on one side with a blue green (vert gris) lizard on the other. The door set also had a dead bolt lock activated by using our beetle turn piece and this was also patinaed blue green.

An eclectic group of cabinet pulls were included in the order with fiddlehead ferns finished blue green to match the lizard knob and with a dragonfly, frog and gecko finished in a simple but complimentary light antique oil-rubbed patina.

The blue and blue patinas were made with varying intensities and applications of acetic acid applied to the surface of the bronze heated to 180 to 100 degrees. We use various commercially available concentrates to expedite the oxidation of the surface molecules and halt the process by sealing with wax to prevent a further chemical reaction. The light antique patina on the cabinet pulls was achieved with a cold application of a commercially made selenic acid, once the desired depth of color was achieved the piece was wiped with a wet rag before being sealed.

The swirling leaves of the willow knob paired with the bark back-plate from the lizard collection.

Insect Art Completed Work

Martin has now completed all 18 insect panels for our front door which will be hung soon following some minor repairs to the door which we suspect may be close to a 100 years old.

Continuing from my earlier post, the panels once gilded were sealed with a clear semi-gloss lacquer and the outline of the insects body and eyes were darkened with a glaze made from mixing a  black UTC with a naphtha-like solvent which was applied with an extremely fine brush. Naphtha is a fast drying solvent and when mixed with oil based pigmented UTC’s dries very rapidly allowing successive layers of color to be built up. Each layer of colored glaze needs to be firmly sealed with a coat of lacquer before the next glaze is applied.

As the UTC pigments are essentially suspended in oil they are translucent and this allows the gold leaf to shine through creating an overall sense of iridescence.

Martin created the different glazes using the following UTC (Universal Coloring Tints) made by Chroma-Chem and typically only available through wholesales paint suppliers.

Green – Thalo Blue (824-7209) mixed with Light Yellow (824-2511)

Orange – Toluidine Red ( 824-0705) mixed with Light Yellow (824-2511)

Lamp Black – 824-9946

Titanium White – 824-0082

Once the panels were deemed complete Martin applied two final coats of semi-gloss lacquer to protect and seal the panels. The panels will be attached to the door with small round brass screws one in each corner.

While we do intend to be using these designs in forthcoming art pieces for those wanting to add a bug or two now  to that special cabinet or room please do check out our animal and insect bronze cabinet pulls.

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Dragonfly beauty with efficiency

We now have a water feature at home so Martin spends a lot of time taking shots with his zoom lens of insects that it attracts and this weekend he was able to capture 2 mating dragonflies and the resulting beginnings of their progeny.

Martin uses a 28-200mm zoom lens and the details he caught of this dragonfly couple were not fully seen until they were uploaded onto his iPad. The couple mated on the wing for a brief couple of minutes and then the female dipped her ovipositor into the pond to disperse her eggs. The speed of the mating and egg deposit took us by surprise and we are impressed by the staggering efficiency of this reproductive cycle.

When the pictures were uploaded on Martin’s iPad we could appreciate the intricate beauty of this flying red wonder. The wings look like fragile window- panes

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Having mated the female hovered over the pond and selected a location to lay her eggs.

She then deposited her eggs into the pond with her ovipositor which she also used to disperse her eggs.

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Click and enlarge to fully appreciate the intricate detail of these window-pane wings that we cannot see with our naked eye.

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Our bronze dragonfly maybe a poor facsimile of nature but we have tried to capture as much detail as possible in our bronze cabinet knob that weighs a hefty 2 ounces and that is colored with a hot red brown patina.

A Swarm of Bees Inspires a Collage of Bee Knobs

This has been the most remarkable spring but the arrival of a swarm of bees was as unexpected as it was spectacular. On Sunday we heard loud buzzing from our front garden and spent the next hour watching the process of hundreds of bees settling in our Brazilian Pepper Tree. What began as a few bees over the next hour became a mass all huddling together to protect the queen. By evening the swarm had settled in and become calm as the temperature cooled and their rest time commenced.

While we knew that the Queen was at the center of this colony, we did not fully understand why this event had occurred so turned to the internet. The queen increases the size of the colony by laying eggs that become worker bees and so the colony grows until it eventually it out-grows the hive at which point the queen lays a few queen eggs. The queen then leaves the hive before the new queen bee hatches and takes with her about half of the worker bees to journey onwards to begin a new hive. We were lucky spectators at the point where the queen and her followers had set out in search of a suitable location for their new home and had decided to rest over-night in our tree. At no point did the swarm pose any threat to us as we passively looked on from a safe distance remaining still save for the photos we took.

The following morning the queen and her entourage waited to be warmed by the sun before continuing on their quest.

I was inspired by the sight of these live bees to create a playful collage using our polished bee door knob with a back-drop of dark honeycomb roses which is the most well-known handle set from our Netsuke collection of animal door handles.

Mushroom Cabinet Knobs and Pulls

When is a mushroom a cabinet knob and when is it a cabinet pull?  Until last week I thought the question was at best a case of semantics and at worst a case of pedantry, but I stand firmly corrected as the wrong word choice can result in oblivion. I am not alas an expert in the field of SEO but when describing our cabinet accessories my primary focus has been on the design element, in this case mushrooms, with my secondary focus being the shape of a piece, if round a knob, if vertical or horizontal, a pull.

Mushroom Cabinet Pull

What had not occurred to me is that the word “mushroom” has on the internet come to mean button mushroom shape and so all manner of cabinet knobs that have no resemblance to a mushroom happily populate the image section for this search term.

Why does this bother me, have I perhaps been eating the wrong mushrooms?  Rest assured my concern has nothing to do with what I have been ingesting but has a lot to do with becoming frustrated with searches that come up short on fungi.

Thankfully there are some very talented and tenacious designers like Suzanne Childress  out there who know a mushroom pull/knob when they see one and who take the time to search through the maze to find the right piece for their client. My sincere thanks to Suzanne for finding our elusive pieces.

Spring is in the Air

Our Netsuke rabbit door knob is taking a break from vegetables and has turned her appetite towards chocolate eggs that seem to be in abundance at this time of the year. So, we hope you will take a leaf out of her book, yes the pun is intended and turn your appetite towards chocolate Easter eggs or maybe some hot cross buns or other delicacy enjoyed at this time of the year.

From us here to you there have a good Easter.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN TO BAT LOVERS

As many of you know Martin loves reptiles and insects but he also loves mammals and this extends to bats which are found in his collection of animal cabinet pulls.

For some reason I do not think of bats as mammals and see them as flying rodents and indeed if you look at many bats they do appear to be rats with leathery wings.

Bat Cabinet Pulls

When Martin and I were in Belize several years ago we stayed at the luxurious Blancaneaux Lodge, a Coppola resort and took a guided excursion by canoe to Barton Creek Cave. The ancient Maya once used this cave as a burial site and the interior is filled with spectacular stalactites and stalagmites and a thriving bat colony.The ceiling of the cave was fairly low so with our head held flash lights we could see the fine details of the bat faces and their fury bodies as they hung from the cave ceiling in clusters. 

More recently, in Paso Robles, in the hot month of August with the doors open to cool the house a large bat with a 16" wing span flew into our bedroom. After much flapping the bat tired and so Martin was able to carefully hold the bat by its wings and emboldened by his action I stroked the incredible downy coat of its fur and touched the soft fine translucent leathery skin of its wings. Respecting the bats right to peace we turned all the house lights off and released him back to the night. For those bat lovers out there is a great YouTube page where you can see a bat rescue center in Australia with some adorable bat videos.