Key plates and backplates

At the end of the Gothic era, and especially during the High Renaissance, the ornamentation and decoration of key plates (escutcheons) and door knocker backplates were based on vertical floral and zoomorphic compositions. To facilitate opening, escutcheons would also feature a small ring fashioned in the style of a door knocker or perhaps a handle in the shape of a cone, ball, or flower. Ornamentation was accentuated with grooving and embossed bulbs. Key plates punched from thin sheet into the form of a Landsknecht are characteristic of German locksmithing from the mid-seventeenth century. The artistic and technical craftsmanship required to make the escutcheon (engraving, repoussé and chasing) and form the figurative motif reflects the period of the Thirty Years’ War in Central Europe. Vocational training at locksmith and blacksmith schools in the nineteenth century included the production of Late Renaissance and Baroque replicas of key plates.