As a custom door hardware designer and craftsman, Martin Pierce finds he is often called upon by interior designers to help solve the hardware challenges that arise when a home is being renovated.

The textural beauty of tree bark was the starting point for the custom door handle set designed by Martin Pierce for Bonnie McIntyre, an interior designer based in Santa Monica, CA. The home being renovated was a 1930’s classic California residence in a private Bel Air Canyon. While the project called for classical bronze handles, finding the right fit from the broad range of Martin Pierces custom door handle was a challenge for McIntyre. The client, an avid birder, helped steer an aesthetic path by choosing Pierce’s woodpecker as the front door knocker and McIntyre and Pierce then collaborated to create a new one of a kind door knob employing the bark texture for the back-plate with a smoother, easy to grip knob from Pierce’s Willow collection of door hardware. The sets were finished with a light patina that added depth to the castings and reinforced their 3 dimensional feel.

The Willow series was continued into the rest of the home with Willow knobs being used next to Hedgerow pulls to create a very organic but sophisticated statement and one that when nickel plated paired well with the pewter and steel of the kitchen fixtures. The transitional points from the kitchen to butler’s pantry and through to the breakfast room were more whimsical and McIntyre chose the rabbit knobs from Piece’s netsuke collection for the interior passageway doors.