Doors
Sandy Grant | Wednesday January 25, 2017 17:10
This is unfortunate and partly the result of standardisation. We buy the same product and mostly think no more about it. A door is merely a part of an opening through a wall so what can possibly be said about it? Internally, it merely closes off one room from another. Quite so. But even today it is worth noting how doors differ.
The big buildings of big companies and big churches require appropriately large doors. This tends to be a matter of scale. Smaller buildings need smaller doors. But also note that even the utilitarian door is now available to the better off with better wood and considerable ornamentation.
Elaborate ornamentation in almost everything, furniture, buildings and whatever, has indeed become the means by which wealth and power can be measured.
But even then, doors cannot be doors without a frame and those now on sale come so thin that a breath of air can make them bend.
But take a step backward to the days when the door really was a door, hand-crafted and often with individual features.
But note too that the door was not and never could be a stand-alone item. Without a means of attaching it to a wall, the door was useless. So we need to take note of the differing kind of hinges that were made over the years.
But then we need also to take note of other components of a door if indeed it was to function as a door. There had, of course, to be a handle so that the door could open, and a key and lock which would allow it to be shut securely. Old locks and keys were often startlingly large.
The old lock and key of the DR Church in Mochudi could and maybe still can be seen at the Phuthadikobo Museum in Mochudi.
The photo that I have chosen to illustrate my interest in doors could also have fitted in neatly with a comment on pillars.
This was the unusual, attractive and prestigious entrance to Kgosi Bathoen’s lovely office in the Kanye kgotla – all pillars being intended to reflect prestige.
Sometime during the process which saw an enormous new tribal office come into being, and the consequent sidelining of the old, historical office, the wooden embellishments were removed, tossed aside and presumably regarded as being of little interest or importance.
A pity. Wood does not survive long on the ground and it has to be presumed that they are now lost. It can be noted, therefore, that wood, as a generality, so important in the past, has lost popular favour. This is a great shame.
By its nature, wood is an art form material. It is infinitely varied, it has different characteristics, colures and contours.
In contrast, neither cement nor aluminum can be seen as an art form material despite Credo Mutwa’s fantastic figures in the Lotlamoreng Park in Mahikeng.