A major reason why we believe strongly in the importance of a bespoke wardrobe designer is that when it comes to fitted wardrobes, the details shape the whole.
It is remarkable how a change in varnish, a change in wooden detailing or even the choice of wardrobe door and drawer handle can have a fundamental effect on the final result once the easy-to-build kit is complete.
One of the most transformative of these is, rather ironically, the simplest looking. The humble Victorian brass cupboard knob is a case in point. Solid, versatile and timeless, it was not a revolution but more a perfection of a furniture staple during an age of increasing mass production.
To understand why, it is important to look at an almost unfathomable past before the doorknob was the norm.
Whilst doors have existed since the dawn of houses, how they were opened and secured was far more variable than one might expect, and whilst doorknobs did exist from a very early era, they were not necessarily the norm.
They tended to instead be latches, pull straps made of string or leather, or door knockers with levers that could be pulled and pushed.
Arguably, the earliest furniture knob was found in Ancient Egypt, dated between 1550 and 1295 BC.
This wooden knob would have been coated in leather, making it easy to grip onto to either open, lift or carry.
Despite this, door and furniture knobs remained the exception rather than the rule; many houses did not have interior doors, which at the time would be the most common reason to have a door knob.
What is somewhat unusual is that, despite ostensibly being a simple design, door knobs were remarkably uncommon until the 18th century, with a few possible reasons for their omission.
One of the first is that, before the development of more elaborate door handles and opening mechanisms, door knobs were limited in use to providing a handle to make it easier to open and close a door.
This meant that they were only suitable for indoor use, and even then, a latch was generally preferred as it provided the same handle but could also be properly opened and closed.
Many homes at the time, outside of castles and larger manor houses, did not even have meaningful rooms or partitions, making doorknobs less useful.
A final aspect of this is that in many cases, doors were made by blacksmiths, who were primarily metalworkers and preferred to make metal handles and latches rather than doorknobs, which at the time were typically made by carpenters instead.
It was not necessarily convenient to use a doorknob at the time, compared to a latch or a handle, given that you would need to commission a blacksmith for the door and a carpenter for the woodturning needed to make a suitable knob.
The biggest change to the world of doorknobs started in the 17th and 18th centuries, as the piece of furniture changed from a rare idiosyncratic luxury to a capable necessity.
Some early examples of what would become the new standard were found in the Palace of Versailles, the impossibly lavish estate for the King of France, which would become an inadvertent pioneer for many pieces of furniture that would become standard.
However, amidst the hall of mirrors, parquet flooring and the first ever conservatory used for socialising, the ornate door handles found in some of the doors and corridors are a sign of what was to come.
Far more important than this was the development of the mortice lock, particularly by the end of the 17th century, where the traditional pull latch was replaced by a doorknob connected to a twisting mechanism that could open easily and elegantly.
By the end of the 18th century and the rise of the industrial revolution, it became far easier to design rounded functional door knobs in a variety of sizes, shapes and materials, which were perfectly suited to match the needs of a growing number of functions.
Not only did it affect interior and exterior doors, but it also played a role in the development of the wardrobe away from the conventional armoire, with the slightly smaller dimensions suiting a doorknob better than a recessed door pull or lever.
As the Victorian age oscillated between an obsession with ornament and function, the rounded mushroom-style doorknob became the standard design, to the point that it is still known as a Victorian doorknob to this day.
