Knockers Two

You might remember that a little more than a month ago I confessed my fascination with knockers. I think my interest stems partly from the fact that they are so uncommon in the US where everybody has a doorbell. Wooden construction makes it simple to drill a hole, run a wire and hook up electric chimes. Here in Italy, we were without a doorbell for a time as ours was malfunctioning. This is a bigger deal than in a single family home since the doorbell does double duty as an intercom and remote door opener for the entryway door. I watched over the electrician's shoulder as he tried to figure out what was going on in a building which is hundreds of years old and made of stone. Not my idea of a fun time. Fortunately, after a month or so, the day before the electrician was set to come and spend a day putting in a new intercom the old one spontaneously started working. Go figure - nobody touched it and we weren't about to open it up to see why it suddenly had life.

Our week-long trip to Northern Italy took us to two cities which I found to be rich in knockers: Verona and Venice. Verona had a nifty lion theme going. I haven't been able to uncover any symbolic reason for that which is unique to Verona. Of course, lions symbolize power and there is a bronze of a winged lion in the Piazza della Erbe. Viterbo has the lion as its symbol, so it wouldn't be all that unusual or unique for the Veronese to think they had cornered the market on the lion figure. The first of my lion examples is quite ornate while the second is simpler on an older looking, scarred door.

Also from Verona comes a simple ring with an obvious twist.

My favorite knocker from Verona is this ornate, devil-like figurehead on a faded, red-washed door. The wash extends all the way to the knocker itself, which is metallic. This is likely playing on a Dante theme inspired by the Circles of Hell.

In Venice I discovered this small, Egyptian-inspired knocker on a blue door.

And this fish/sea inspired knocker on a slate green door.

But, my favorite sighting of all time, knocker-wise, was a door hardware store on a little side street with display windows full of knockers. No, I'm not talking about the Red-light District of Amsterdam. See the three pictures below of a display of singletons followed by a couple of nifty pairs of knockers.

Unfortunately, these things weigh kilos each and cost hundreds of euros apiece, so you won't see me dragging any back to Springfield to adorn our door on Fairfield Street. Which is probably a good thing since they would be terribly out of place there anyway.