Of Necessity
When visitors and friends come to your home, especially if they’re the type to pitch in and a) wash the dishes, b) take out the garbage, or c) feed the pets, (we all have friends like this!), then they’ll surely be handling one of your chosen indoor pieces of hardware.
They will have an impression from their experience. After all, you can imagine your feelings grabbing a cabinet knob that’s shaped like a cat or dog or has a logo of a sports team, or drawing water from a beluga faucet! You can give them a gentle reminder of what’s important to you without even trying!
On this page, you can see some ideas. Do you want to tell them, “I’m American Indian” by the kokopelli insignia? How about, “I’d rather be by the ocean?” Or, “This is where you find bath towels?”
Find these and more at Knobs, Hinges and More.
Add comment June 29th, 2007
Just as an exercise to demonstrate the diversity of collections offered at 
yesteryear, but some include polished brass offerings.
While what you see on this page may appear trifling, some of the objects you see are quite large, being a foot or more in the longest dimension. Many of these items are simple gravity latches - gravity keeps the door “locked.” 
If access to the latches can be prevented by the arrangement of the threshold, door and door jamb, they can virtually be used as locking latches (as long as gravity pulls downward!)
Many of these latches and bolts are reminiscent of a bygone era, reaching back to our country’s founding, when the smith plied his trade. Due to this simplicity, they are commonly used in stables or on farms and ranches. 
If you like simplicity, where function is obvious and you don’t need a user’s manual to operate them, select from among the styles displayed here and make a statement!
Of all the common metal finishes, the polished chrome finish provides the most accurate reflection. When struck with blue light, it reflects blue light. When struck with green, it reflects green. Unlike copper, brass or bronze, polished chrome alters the light spectrum the least, coloring reflections the least.
What this means for the home decorator is that you use chrome (a shortened form of “chromium”, the metallic element that gives us this good reflection) where you don’t want to introduce another section of the color palette that you’ll just end up having to match and somehow blend into your color selection. (The “KISS” principle, “Keep It Simple, Stupid”, applies to home decorating, where you often want to keep the number of colors in your decorating scheme to a minimum.)
Just one word of caution concerning chrome should be observed. Since most lighting fixtures come in either fluorescent or incandescent, your chrome selections with also reflect their spectrum of light. Incandescents naturally reflect the warm yellowish spectrum and your chrome fixtures will dutifully reflect the same. The fluorescents will give off a bluish-whitish spectrum and your chrome fixtures will dutifully reflect the same. 
So, your chrome fixtures will tend to amplify your light sources, appearing, if you will, as additional sources of light, at least as far as the eye is concerned.
If you want to limit your color palette and polished chrome is your means, you’ll want to look at the wide selection of options at 
My son and future daughter-in-law want to do ranching. It’s a stretch to say that where we live ranching is done regularly. So, if we want to be near them, we have to move. They plan to raise beef cattle and horses for breeding and to assist in herd management.
I can imagine just what their home will look like when they finally decorate it. Do you see a basic theme here? I was amazed to discover that some of the cabinet knobs come with embedded leather in various colors. There are also door hinges and other hardware that reflect stable and gate hinges. 
If you want to avoid beating around the bush, you can simply use hardware shaped like a horse head. Let there be no mistake!
Offerings depicted on this page can all be obtained from the good folks at 
No, I’m not talking about my spouse after I’ve done the really crass thing! Porcelain and ceramic cabinet knobs have a hardened, glossy surface or glaze that allows cleaning and sanitizing like glass (’Windex-able’), yet they have an opaque (can’t-see-through) surface that can be colored with or without an underlying design. 
The manufacturers of these pieces of hardware have complete coloring freedom to satisfy demanding color coordination requirements. You’ll see all the offerings on this page at 
When selecting ceramic and porcelain fixtures, you need to be careful where you use them. 
Also, any brutal use of the knob can cause a piece to chip off. There are two solutions: 1) Use such knobs in areas where it is unlikely that hard objects can come in contact with them, or 2) have a supply of replacement knobs handy for those unlikely random events.
While you’re enjoying these knobs, you can rest assured that they’ll clean and restore their glaze easily with glass or ceramic cleaner. Because they are naturally hard material, they can last for the life of the home. You can find a wide assortment from 
Most inquisitive youngsters have had the fun of holding a mirror in front of another mirror with the head in between. Because each mirror reflects off the other, with the viewer in between, he or she sees many reflections of himself, almost eerily, as if being in a long tube that goes on to infinity. You would be able to see yourself infinitely many times, if it weren’t for the imperfections of the mirrors. Each successive image becomes darker than the one before. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ll have to try it. I can only begin to understand what it would look like with a lighted mirror!
Well, lighted mirrors are used for close inspection. Doctors use them. People who must appear in public use them. They reveal what you don’t normally see and are invaluable in preventing embarrassment. 
Where the visitor first meets you is where 
Bronze, being second cousin to brass, does well in the elements, at times even garnering a green patina, like many statues in historic places. This characteristic lends an aura of antiquity and authority to your front door. Is that what you want to portray to your first-time visitors?
The assortments in these two collecitons provide you a wide variety of themes and ideas. They let you convey the message you may already be carrying in the interior of your home. Be sure to check out the offerings from 
These fixtures would appear in their element if the walls and floors were covered with marble. How do you complement marble and do it justice? The answer is with style.
Other manufacturers’ wares at 
the fixtures sanitary because there are few hiding places for contamination.
Why is there such a device as a “bin pull?” 
Because bins are likely to contain pounds of potatoes, trash or other common-use items, a hefty handle is needed. Hence, the bin pull.
I was amazed at the variety of these objects that can be found, even from one manufacturer, 
From transparent to opaque, glass to marble to metal, brushed to polished - the variety is astounding. I’m impressed that even one manufacturer would take the pains to make them all available. 
Just imagine the variety of machinery that must be maintained to provide this collection! (Of course, you don’t have to worry about that - that’s someone else’s headache. All you have to do is go to 
