Door handles

Door handles and hammer- and ring-style door knockers were introduced in the fourteenth century to make it easier to open doors. Two Gothic door handle designs can be found: with one or with two vertical or horizontal crossarms attached to the door. The oldest types of pull handles were forged from solid iron, twisted from several round or square bars, or made of wrought sheet metal rolled into a cylinder. For more prestigious buildings, decoratively hammered and interlocking wires were wound around the cylinder handle, which was often underlaid with coloured leather. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, door handles were richly adorned with etched ornamentation. Bar door handles were decorated with baluster-shaped spirals set in the centre of the rings.