Ah, doorknobs: today, we've returned to simple efficiency -- but back in the 1950s, style went into everything, all the way down to the knobs.
Just look at that huge molded star surrounding an otherwise plain knob -- it looks like if you grab the doorknob wrong, you're risking a slashed palm and one less finger than you're accustomed to. Extreme care was needed when opening doors in the fifties. Here's some close-ups of other examples:
I'm rather disappointed at how they cheated: there's only 5 distinct plates here...they rotated the square one 45°, they added a background for the rectangle grid and star. I can't imagine these are the only options -- there had to be
something at least as gaudy. It's sad to think that these were so utterly, overpoweringly 1950s, that they all went in the dump shortly thereafter. I don't think I've ever seen any of these in the wild, and I've been to a lot of ugly houses. The clean lines of modernism killed off all the fun.
Labels: 1950s, doorknobs, home improvement, kitsch
