Paso Robles Tree Inspiration

We recently escaped the urban scene of Los Angeles and took a brief camping trip into the rolling hills of Paso Robles. As many know, this area is a frequent haunt for Martin Pierce  and was the inspiration for his collection of wine cellar door handles and vine cabinet pulls.
For this visit we decided to camp and pitched our tent in the undeveloped acreage of  absentee friends who wisely were escaping the heat. The experience was challenging with  temperatures ranging from 101 degrees during the day to an almost bearable 80° at night. When the heat proved too much we drove to Cambria where the marine fog engulfed the coastline creating a chilly 70° temperature. The fog plays a critical role in the surrounding foliage bringing moisture to the trees and grasses of Paso Robles 30 miles in land.
Lichen on the local live oak trees plays a key role in this ecosystem providing food, shelter and nesting materials to deer, mice, squirrels and other mammals. Lichens are not, as I mistakenly thought, a type of plant but rather a remarkable organism made of algae and fungus that obtain all their nutrients from the air rather than soil. The fungal aspect of this organism provides a structure for the algae and the algae provides food for the fungus. Like plants, lichens use the sun through a process of photosynthesis to convert the food to energy in return giving back valuable oxygen. Lichen also removes pollutants in the air by trapping larger particles and absorbing smaller particles of nitrogen and sulfur.

Our mornings often began with the sounds of Nuttall woodpeckers tapping tree trunks to find grubs as well as suitable larders for acorns harvested from the live oaks. A more generic woodpecker was the model for our woodpecker door knocker that also functions as a door pull.

Playful Positioning of A Woodpecker Door Knocker

The bark of the live oaks has a beautiful texture and their inspiration is clear to see in the backplates and escutcheons of the lizard collection of door handles.

Playful Positioning of A Lizard Entry Lever

UV Impact on Colored Patinas On Bronze

Arguably, from a door handle perspective, Florida can be one of the most demanding climates. The state is a peninsula surrounded by sea water and its latitude yields many days of sunshine and not surprisingly is home to many of our clients.

UV Impact on Bronze

When we hot patina a door or cabinet pull we heat the bronze with a torch and apply successive coats of pigment suspended in water to the metal surface which absorbs the pigment left after the water  evaporates. The patina absorbs UV and this leads to a chemical change that breakdowns the bonds between the pigment molecules making the color appear less vibrant. The lizard levers below will fade over time with UV exposure so what are the options?

Photo of lizards at patina stage before sealant applied. Photo courtesy of the photographer Maria Ramirez-Adams.

 How to lessen UV impact

Clear polyurethane resin and polyester offer 2 different ways of sealing and protecting the color.

Polyurethane acts as a UV blocker and as a resistant physical barrier that shields the color beneath. It blocks the UV by absorbing, deflecting and scattering the UV away from the metal surface thereby slowing chemical changes in the patina.

Clear polyurethane resin also creates a physical barrier that shields the layers beneath from UV and also from salt and environmental contaminants that can degrade the patina. The resin is typically sprayed onto the surface and air dried rather than baked.

 Polyester versus powder coat

Polyester is also an excellent sealant for protecting metal from UV and salt and environmental degradants. The practical difference lies in how they are applied and cured.  Polyester is applied as a powder using an electrostatic process. The piece to be coated is attached to a copper frame or rod which negativley charges it. The applicator, which is like a spray gun is positively charged and when fired the gun sprays powder onto the surface of the object. In simple terms think of physics 101 when a magnet is used to attract iron filings. The powder bonds to the surface of the object. To make the bond more permanent the coated object is baked  to a temperature of 350 to 400 degrees for at 10+ minutes. With polyurethane the finish cures over a longer period often taking 5 to 7 days to complete. The Geckos shown here were both hot patinaed with a green pigmented solution but the top gecko was first dipped in a cold dark solution and then both were coated with polyester and baked. Polyester makes the pieces a little plastic in appearance but it does offer a resilient seal that will last for years.

The Design Process for Door Handles

Creating door hardware is a balancing act where artistic inspiration is balanced and refined to meet the practical demands of functionality.

Continuing from last weeks post I want to share some of the initial designs that were submitted to designer Debbie Zylstra for her client’s home in Kailua-Kona. Debbie was in the process of designing a home entertainment center in Koa wood and wanted to incorporate dramatic door pulls for sliding doors. The cabinet was grand in scale at a height of 9’ and the lizard heroic handles were considered as a possibility. These pieces are extremely realistic, and the client wanted something more stylized and original but in the reptile family so, pencil in hand, Martin sketched out the iguanas. Martin designed 2 interlocking iguanas which give the illusion of being 2 different pieces, but which use one iguana that is inverted to create a pair. To get a sense of proportion he then reduced the scale and inserted the design into a scaled drawing of the cabinet. The body and head of both iguanas project out from the cabinet door by 4” and the underside of each projects 1 ½” so that there is enough clearance for the hand to grab either the head or tail of each iguana to slide the pocket door open. The angle of the head, legs and tail were made so that the pair would interlock comfortably but leave sufficient space so that fingers would not be pinched.

Below are the original sketches for the first large reptile sculptures that are the central pieces in the Lizard collection. Given their realistic design Martin felt he needed to create a left and right facing lizard so that he could more naturally capture the movement of a pair of lizards. The pair was designed so that the head of the right lizard protrudes beyond the slate back-plate allowing the thumb to then be extended to depress the butterfly thumb piece and thereby release the door latch.

How a Door's Stile Can Influence Your Style of Door Hardware

Yes the pun is intended this is not a typographical error. For doors that have a raised panel or glass panel, the flat unencumbered surface has a direct impact on the size and style of the door handle back-plate or escutcheon. The stile will also impact the back-set of the latch that is being used with the door handle whether it be a passageway or privacy latch.

What to measure?

You will need to measure both the outside width of your back-plate and the net width of your door stile, meaning, the flat area that is free of any molding or beading. You will also need to consider the door stop which is typically part of the door jam and which will overlap the door stile when the door is closed.

When measuring a decorative or asymmetric back plate or one that is uneven we suggest taking the measurement from the reverse flat side.

Where to position the escutcheon on the door stile?

To center or not to center the decorative trim will determined by factors discussed above and by the differing back-sets offered for tubular versus mortise latches. The back-set is the distance measured from the edge of the door to the center point of the lock and these are available at  2”, 2 3/8",2 ¾”, 3”, 4” for tubular latches and at 2 ½”, 2 ¾” for mortise latches. Narrower 1 ¾” and deeper 3”-5” back-sets can be found but usually are custom made.

Working examples

Interior Door with a 4 1/2” stile and with a 3/8” door stop using a back plate that is 3” wide. The center point of our door is 2 ¼” and center of our escutcheon is 1 ½ and the nearest back-set for a tubular latch which would position the trim at just over center point is a 2 3/8" back-set. The trim would be almost centered (1/8" off center) but  it would yield a  1/2" clearance from the edge of the plate to the door stop. If we used a deeper 2 3/4" back-set latch then our trim would be off center by 1/2" and a narrow 2" back-set would bring the trim too close to the stop with a mere 1/8" clearance.

 Patio Door with 5” door stile and 3/8" door stop and 3” back plate would have corresponding center points of 2 1/2” and 1 ½” so would work with tubular latch back set of 2 3/4” or a mortise latch of 2 3/4”. In the image below you can see how this would look with our lizard door lever set.

Levers ,Knobs and Handing

While the door stile will largely determine the maximum width of your  back-plate and how it will be centered on the door, the handing of the door and whether you use a door knob or lever should also be considered. Door levers pivot away from the edge of the door and can be operated with less hand engagement than knobs which tend to be enveloped by the hand making knobs more problematic for door jams that have wide door stops.

Useful resource – a client recently referred me to a Canadian site that provides a very helpful checklist worth reviewing if you are planning to mix styles and mediums in your kitchen remodel.

Color in Nature and Hot Patinas for Door Handles

The green anole lizard was the inspirational basis of Martin Pierce’s lizard door lever. The lizard’s vivid pea green color is however a challenging finish to capture as a bronze patina and one that requires considerable dexterity and access to a blow torch, so hobbyists should proceed with caution.

While the lizard door knob is not of the anole family, as you can see from the photo below he is often specified by customers who want a similar finish to match his mate.

Lizard Door Lever and Lizard door knob

In an earlier post we described how to create an antique patina on bronze by using Birchwood Technologies' M20 product and how this chemical solution, through chemical conversion, creates a brown black patina that penetrates and bonds with the bronze. The cold patina process is a necessary first step that has to be taken before moving on to create a  hot green patina as without it, the green solution will tend to slough of the surface of the bronze. Once the blackened piece has dried it is then gently burnished to remove some of the cold patina from the lizard area. We mix white, pea green and yellow dye oxides, available through Sculpt Nouveau, to create the right shade of green which is applied several times to the handle to achieve the right hue. Throughout the hot patina process the handle is kept at a temperature of about 200° by using a blow torch.

The vivid greens are used by many creatures as camouflage that allow them to blend in with surrounding flora as is the case with this praying mantis that was wonderfully hidden in the variegated tones of this begonia vine.

Custom Door Handle Videos

At long last we are making videos for our custom door handles and will be sharing these with you both on our new Video Gallery and on YouTube and DailyMotion.

The first video was shot on location at a private residence and features our Lizard Entry Thumb latch set.

The big advantage to showing our custom hardware in this format is you get to see and understand what we mean by “functional art”. The lizard sculpture acts as a large bronze door pull and you grip the body of the lizard to open the door or in this case front gate. Above the lizard there is a sculpted bronze back-plate reminiscent of stone, on which a butterfly is perched. The butterfly is also a functioning thumb latch and when depressed it opens the gate by releasing the mortise lock.  On the reverse side or inside of the gate we used a smaller lizard sculpture to act as the door lever and to continue the natural theme mounted the lever on a bronze back-plate styled to resemble tree bark. Lizard food, in this case a small beetle, is used as a whimsical bronze turn piece that functions to either open or close the deadbolt.

As the lizards have been made as lefts and rights they will also will work well on door double doors or gates.

In this particular project we created custom grills at the top of the gate in the form of flax stems and appropriately added a left and right bronze frog to complete the entrance. As Martin Pierce is also a wood carver he carved a wooden raven head to house the chain for the house bell.

While I hope you find this description clear I hope you will agree that the video does a better job of capturing the three dimensional reality of this set.       

While videos are fun to watch they can be difficult to make  so our thanks go to Jeff Jenkins whose patience as  director and skill as a videographer made this project a success. Jeff’s work can be seen at;