How to Identify an Antique Door Knob

Most antique doorknobs carry no name at all. What they do carry is a pattern, and the Antique Doorknob Collectors of America has spent decades sorting patterns into a catalogue of more than four thousand photographed examples, each with its maker, its school of ornament and its approximate date where those are known. Identification is a matter of matching your knob to one of them. Work through the steps below in order; each one narrows the field.

1. Start with the pattern, not the maker

Hold the knob face-on and ask how the design is organised. Does one recognisable thing fill it — an animal, a face, a building? Does the pattern repeat two, three, four, five, six or eight times around the centre? Does it spiral, radiate from the centre, or run in concentric rings? Is the knob oval, or an unusual shape altogether? The archive is filed by exactly these questions, one letter per answer. Open the category that fits and scan the grid; a match is usually a few screens away.

2. Name the school of ornament

Hardware makers of the 1870s to 1920s borrowed their vocabulary from the decorative arts and said so in their catalogues: a pattern was sold as Gothic, Romanesque, Italian Renaissance, Louis XVI, Eastlake, Art Nouveau. Learning to see the difference — the pointed tracery of Gothic, the interlaced strapwork of Renaissance, the flat incised geometry of Eastlake, the whiplash line of Art Nouveau — gives you a date range before you know anything else, because each was fashionable for only a decade or two. Every knob in the archive is filed under its school.

3. Look for a maker’s mark

Turn the knob over. The mark, when there is one, is on the shank, on the back of the rose or escutcheon, or inside the lock case the knob came off — rarely on the face. Russell & Erwin, P & F Corbin, Sargent, Yale & Towne, Reading, Norwalk, Branford and a hundred smaller foundries each used stamps, monograms and trademarks that changed over the years, so a mark can date a knob as well as name its maker. The manufacturer pages show the registered stamps beside every knob the archive holds from that maker, which is the quickest way to confirm a guess.

No mark is normal. Many patterns were sold by several makers, and some were cast by one foundry for another, so the archive records the maker as unidentified more often than not. The pattern still places it.

All manufacturers and trademark stamps →

4. Judge the material

Weight, colour and a magnet settle most questions. The material narrows both the date and the price bracket the knob was sold at.

Cast bronze and brass: Heavy for its size, warm yellow to brown under the patina, never rusts. Most ornamented knobs of 1870–1910 are cast bronze; a magnet will not stick. Browse patterned metal knobs →
Cast iron: A magnet sticks. Often japanned (black lacquer) or given a bronze-coloured finish over the iron; look for rust in the recesses of the pattern. Manufacturers’ finish codes →
Pressed and cut glass: Faceted, fluted or moulded; the shank is usually brass or iron. Colour and the number of facets narrow the date. Category R holds the archive’s glass knobs. Browse glass knobs →
Enameled hardware: Coloured enamel fired into recesses of the pattern, often on a bronze knob. Rare, and easy to confuse with later paint — enamel is glassy and does not scratch off. Browse enameled hardware →
Wood and composition: Turned or carved wood, or a moulded composition material (a mineral or fibre compound) that can pass for wood or ceramic. Both were the economical choice. Browse wooden knobs →

5. Date it by patent and finish

A date cast into the metal — “PAT’D JUNE 7 1870” or a bare patent number — is a design patent date, and it marks when the pattern was registered, not when your knob was cast; a popular pattern stayed in production for decades. It is still the firmest date a knob offers. The archive’s patent plates reproduce the original drawings, and many catalogue records cite the patent by number.

The finish helps too. Makers sold the same casting in a dozen named finishes — Berlin bronze, oxidised copper, brush brass, “antique” — each with its own code, and the codes changed with fashion. Match what is left of the original surface against the finish samples before you clean anything; polishing removes the evidence.

Design patent drawings →Manufacturer finish codes →

6. Ask a collector

When the steps above leave two candidates, a photograph of the face, the back and the mark is enough for the club to settle it. Members post finds in the ADCA group, meet at the annual convention, and receive The Doorknob Collector, the club newsletter. The archive is free to use; membership is what keeps it growing.

Join the ADCA Contact the club Search the archive