LOVE HANDLES

Wearstlerworld,

There's an intimacy to hardware that nothing else in a room has. We talk endlessly about how a room looks. We almost never talk about how it feels in the hand. But the doorknob, the pull, the faucet, the switch are the most intimate objects in a house… the things you put your whole hand on every single day, often without even looking. Call it the erotics of a doorknob: the things we touch constantly deserve far more obsession.

At our place on Hillcrest, the hardware is original to 1926 (when the place was built). Which means: large flanges, deep back plates, rim locks with the key still in them (the kind of thing nobody specifies anymore because it is easier not to), levers worn by a hundred years of hands. And the crémone bolts: that vertical rod-and-handle mechanism that locks a tall casement or a pair of French doors top and bottom in one turn. Completely functional but also a flamboyant gesture.

There is a whole vocabulary of these accessories, and each one adds nuan…