Happy Halloween with tigers, bugs and bats

Whether for Halloween, or for no other reason that simple fun, enjoy our creations any time of the year. We have a collection of animal and insect cabinet pulls to chose from all cast in bronze and made to order here in Los Angeles.

For those looking for animal inspired door handles we have a collection of lizard, dragon, frog and rabbit door knobs to chose from. Each piece is first rendered in wax before being dipped in silica to create a tough exterior ceramic shell and finally cast in molten bronze. The process is not complete until each piece is “chased” or finely tooled by hand to remove any imperfections. Still not complete, the piece must be burnished so that it can be finished with either a simple oil rubbed patina or a more colorful hot patina. Voila! A unique piece is ready for your home or office door or cabinet.

The tiger door handle is now available as a powder coated piece in a wide variety of colors. If you have a brand color this can be matched by creating a custom powder. As mentioned in a previous piece, we are moving away from illuminated handles and offering all these pieces in  powder coated colors. The dramatic effect is not diminished but this provides a low- tech solution to supply chain problems with small LED lights.

Making a Statement with Colorful Entry Door Handles

While oil rubbed bronze door handles are naturally beautiful and over time develop their own unique patina, designers seeking a more dramatic entry statement may want to consider powder coated steel as an option. We are fortunate in Los Angeles  to have access to highly skilled powder coating experts like Dan Regan owner of Primo-Powder. We began working with Dan when presented with the challenge of powder coating the inside of a custom Morphic pull that had been specified by Mike Hong of MHA.

The problem was two-fold:

1. How to perfectly match in powder the client’s brand color of that was sampled as a painted chip.

2. How to apply the color once developed through the front lattice of the handle while leaving the lattice and front of the piece color free.

What was surprising was that it was far more difficult to match the color than it proved to be applying it.

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The client’s brand color “Toronto Blue” was available as a liquid paint by manufacturer Sherwin Williams but  not as a powder. We contacted Prismo Powder Coating who manufacture powder and who are familiar with matching colors. The problem though was that while liquid paint has a specific pigment formula or code, there is no cross reference from paint to powder so this process was done by comparing the blue paint sample with the Prismo’s archival records for the color blue. While some of the suggestions were close, out of hundreds of blues none was a perfect match so a custom blue was formulated for our project.

We learned a lot from this project and with help from Dan Regan gained a valuable education in how color can selectively be applied to metal using high temperature masking tape.

With this new insight designers can now add color to our Ergo Entry Door Handle and other pieces as shown in the photos above.