Knobs and door handles
Wooden door knobs for sale
Above are wooden door handles pictured in eleven styles, either in a natural finish or stained black (ebony): beehive mk 1, beehive mk2, bun, Cromwell, Ewardian, gothic, Savoy, St. Pauls, Trafalgar, tulip, and villa. Below is beehive mk3 (taller than 1 and 2) and my favourite. Some other images of these door handles may be found at the very bottom of the page.
The height of all the handles vary from 55 to 70mm with four exceptions (80mm tulip, 85mm beehive 3, and 89mm both Cromwell and Trafalgar). The photographs are roughly to the same scale, but the little thumbnail shot at the left will give you some idea of the difference in height (how far they stick out from the door). Beehive mk3 is at the top and the ebony bun is the shorty in the middle. The brass back plates have a diameter of 60-62mm (the gothic is 70mm from point to point) and the diameter of the wooden handles are 54-57mm across.All the handle pairs can be used with normal sash mortice locks or rim locks. However, they cannot be mounted singley, for instance, on cupboard doors. Click here if you wish to find out how to fit the handles.
The cost of these wooden handles is £31 per pair plus postage.
Other handles
Brass handles are an alternative. I quite like this one, the sea urchin. It is a snip at £30 for a pair. There are others, plain and decorative. But not really my cup of tea. We can email you images if you insist.Possible problems with your handles
Beautiful as these handles are, we have to offer these words of warning. Modern mortice locks and mortice locks without the lock (i.e. the morticed mechanism for the door handle spindle to open the door catch – surely there is a technical name for this) are not as wide as they were in olden days. The centre of the spindle to the edge of the door is generally about 50mm. In other words, the handle is much closer to the door frame than in olden days and it is all too common to find that there is not enough room to grip a round handle without jamming your fingers between it and the door frame, if you are using a modern morticed lock. The curse of modern standardised sizes, means that the industry is geared up for lever handles. Hateful things that they are.You can get around the problem three ways. Deep modern mortice locks do exist. One model has a Eurocylinder lock (which makes changing the lock simpler) and a spindle 100mm from the door edge. It also has a little turn snib so that the door can be locked from the inside without the use of a key.
But this comes at a price: £100. With internal doors you could use ball and catch mechanisms to hold the door shut. In that case the door handles are simple screwed on to the door wherever you like (although with our knobs you will still have to drill a hole through the door to take the spindle, because one handle is connected to the other by the spindle). For exterior doors, this would mean a separate mortice lock for the key. Remember, this solution means that the door handle is for show only and does not open the door. Finally, you could use a rim lock (locks that are attached to the face of the door). We stock two that are very attractive. One is ideal for bathrooms. However, the main door rim lock does not conform to the British Standards codes required by insurance companies. Using them on an external door will require the use of a second lock to keep them happy.
Finally, some more images of wooden knobs. Top to bottom: tulip (ebony), St Pauls (natural), bun (ebony), beehive mk2 (ebony).
