Antique Custom Made Knobs

When looking through my history of American furniture encylopedia I came across some cool old style custom cabinet knobs from 1700-1800s .These were particularly interesting to me since we have a large line of DIY hardware parts for making your own knobs with pictures or scenery just like these!

Of course back in the day these were expensive custom pieces and no one who wasn't rich could really afford them. So glad times have changed! Below I'll show off some of the neater ones I found and also post a few of the cool knobs people have made with our bases at the bottom.

Most of these knobs are enamel with prints via a paper transfer and then set in a copper base. They had to transfer copper engravings onto paper first so it was quite the process! Then they are typically set in a brass base and screw post. We have a lot of fun examples. Many of these pieces were made from governors or members of the government as custom pieces and gifts which makes sense as they would have been very pricey back at that time.

 To start off we have a set of knobs customized with General George Washington's depiction. You can see even from the old photos that these knobs had amazing details for items produced pre-1800.

The next couple are of state governors of the time. Governor Huntington and Governor Morris.

Many knobs were made for the well off and would feature portraits of the husband and wife or depictions of family crests or symbols. Pictures of subjects of special interest to the family or of local importance would enshrine a history and make permanent record of events that at the same time added a pleasing and decorative feature.

Others were more for decoration and would feature scenes from life at the time. In the following images you can see a woman leaning on an anchor, a young flautist, a young girl in a bonnet, and several scenes of a woman enjoying nature.

And just to sum up I'll show off just one shot of some customized cabinet knobs made by Cher at Designs by Studio C in a project done for this very blog. With our custom knob parts you can take any photo you want and protect it behind a glass cabochon and display whatever you want from patterns to photos.

I hope this interests more people than me lol!