Mike Smith's collection is a handful.
The North Little Rock city engineer counts his assemblage of antique doorknobs at more than 500, as he reaches out for more.
"This is like jewelry," he says, "architectural jewelry."
Most are brass and at least a century old -- relics from the golden age of American doorknob manufacturing, 1870-1910. A grand home of the era was grand in every sense, Smith says. Even the doorknobs had style.
"Scrolls," he says, pointing out examples, "and round patterns, and then you get into spirals."
And floral-patterned, geometric-patterned, square knobs, rectangular knobs, six-sided knobs, octagonal knobs.
Doorplates of the era were just as fancy. Hinges were marvels to behold, and even the screws showed class. But Smith opens up to just the one component, the doorknob.
"Look at that beauty," he says of another in his collection. "That's pretty."
One doorknob might seem the same as another -- an object to wrap fingers around, not one to grip a man's attention. But Smith displays his treasures at eye level, up where the artistry shows. He takes one off the display board to feel the heft of it -- a pound and more, some of these. Factories of the time competed at making the most elaborate, the most solid.
The much-sought-after "doggie" knob, for example: a finely sculpted setter-type pooch looking out of a wreath. The "doggie" is often cited as the finest doorknob ever made, according to Smith's authority on the subject.
He turns to Victorian Decorative Art: A Photographic Study of Ornamental Design in Antique Doorknobs by Leonard Blumin (1983), one of the few such exhaustive studies of old doorknobs.
"Several thousand different knobs,"
Smith says. "Who would have known?"
An original edition of the book itself is a collector's item, but how else would a person know that doorknobs, like doors, have two sides?
The back of the "doggie" tells the name of the manufacturer, long-gone Russell & Erwin of Connecticut, and more -- the flourish of a scrolling vine. Artwork on the back is a common feature of the best knobs, Smith says, still surprised to see it.
"On the back," he says, "something you'd never see in 100 years of use."
Yesterday's doorknobmakers considered the entire object as an ornament, pleasing to hand and eye. The collectors' saying is that to take hold of a doorknob is to shake hands with the house.
KNOCK-KNOCK
Smith began his collection five years ago, Internet-shopping for a brass sundial (of no interest now, as things turned out). The search detoured to decorative metal, to ornamental hardware, to the first brass doorknob that caught his eye.
"I got this really nice one," he says. "I didn't know it would be so nice, and I thought I'd see if I could find any more."
A twist later, he had discovered he is not alone in the world of doorknob fanciers (or "knobbers"), although he's pretty much alone in Arkansas.
"We're not in the hub of these things," he says -- "not where the factories were [in the East], and not where people know about them."
Few collectible doorknobs turn up in flea markets in Arkansas, Smith says. He watches for rarities on eBay, the Internet auction site, where he started with $5 and $10 acquisitions. Today's shopper finds higher prices.
Ever in search of doorknobs, Smith joined of the 34-year-old, 220-member Antique Doorknob Collectors of America, headquartered in Hackettstown, N.J. at antiquedoorknobs.org.
"We invite everyone out there to consider our club and collections," association President Allen Joslyn says. Members receive a newsletter, and the group holds an annual convention.
Newsletter topics have included not only round metal doorknobs, but also porcelain knobs, Fireman's Fund Insurance knobs and other company logo knobs -- and the related interest of one thing to do with an old doorknob: Use it for a paperweight. The next convention will be Aug. 5-8 in Pasadena, Calif., certainly a place to find doorknobs.
Joslyn started his collection of a "few hundred" on business trips in the 1970s.
"I always made it a point to search out architectural salvage places and buy all I could," he says. "They were cheap, but there was no organized way to get them.
"At one point, my goal was to get one example of every ornamental doorknob. Eventually, I decided that was a fool's quest."
"The more you have, the less you want -- in theory," he tells newcomers. "I guess I am still gaga over very fine pieces, and I am getting interested in good British hardware."
Smith shares membership in the association with Elise Roenigk of Eureka Springs.
"I don't know how many I have," Roenigk says -- "dozens," all stored in boxes since she and her late husband, Martin, moved from Connecticut to Northwest Arkansas 16 years ago.
"I had visions of doing something with them," she says, and still does. "They're just things I think are beautiful -- cut glass and some that look like old marbles or paperweights, anything that catches my eye."
She and her husband shared a bigger interest in collecting music boxes. Also, they bought some of the best-known properties in Eureka Springs and nearby: the Crescent and Basin Park hotels, and War Eagle Mill.
They restored the 129-year-old Crescent to the look it had when a grand entrance included the hardware.
WHO'S THERE?
Doorways go back thousands of years, but doorknobs? Not so much.
Animal hides and blankets covered the earliest door spaces. Wooden doors hung by straps in the Middle Ages. Door slamming became possible.
About that time, people invented the idea of locking the door against interlopers. The king locked the front door to the castle with a heavy bar. At home, a hasp lock made the difference between just any room and the new idea of "my room." Door technology produced the thumb latch.
The doorknob as part of a locking mechanism came in the 1800s, and the doorknob as an American-made work of metal art flourished in the Victorian era of showplace mansions. People who could afford the best special-ordered knobs with initials and family crests, and cameos of famous figures and Roman gladiators.
"You must have had a nice house to want a Roman doorknob," Smith says.
The doorknob association's website tells the origin of collecting these things.
"The decades of 1950-1970 witnessed the often sad phenomenon known as urban renewal. Aging Victorian houses were destroyed to make way for modern city dwellings."
A few "salvage-minded opportunists" beat the wrecker's ball, the site recollects. "Ornate hardware plucked from the ruins made its way to the hands and hearts of collectors."
The collectors association credits the start of doorknob scholarship to retired beautician Maud Eastwood, author of The Antique Doorknob (1976) -- a woman once described by the Los Angeles Times as "a legend among doorknob aficionados."
OPEN THE DOOR
Smith's collection has expanded from American brass and iron to generally bigger European knobs, some the diameter of a grapefruit.
These giants weren't made to turn, he says. They attached to the door in fixed position as something to grab.
Europeans "used hinges and handles," he says. They were slow to come around to the twist-and-open lock mechanism that he credits to American ingenuity.
Smith arrays his doorknobs on pegboards in neat rows by the dozen, by the hundred, some at North Little Rock City Hall.
One place he does not keep any of his collection is where most people put a doorknob -- on the door. Smith and his wife, Carolyn, have conventional, hardware-store doorknobs around the house,.
Antique doorknobs for doorknobs?
"I haven't thought about doing that," he says.
Style on 04/14/2015