Posted May 29, 2015
Written by Lindsey Vogel-Teeter, Museum Curator

This fall, a visitor on a tour of the Rosson House Museum happened to be a member of the Antique Doorknob Collectors of America (ADCA) and was curious about the hardware throughout the Rosson House. After checking with some fellow collectors, our visitor contacted our staff and sent the information he had uncovered.

According to the research done by ADCA, the hardware in the Rosson House was most likely produced by the F. C. Linde & Co. of Creskill, New Jersey. Linde & Co. was one of many small hardware manufacturing companies. There are no known catalogs of Linde & Co. products they did produce some very distinctive patterns.

Some Linde & Co. hardware was distributed by Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett  & Co. (now True Value Hardware), a major hardware supplier and producer of multiple mail-order catalogs.

Our doorknob pattern (seen at the top of the page) shows up in the 1891 Hibbard catalog and continues through at least 1899. If you’d like to view a copy of the Hibbard, Google Books provides full access an 1891 catalog, click here and scroll to pages 256 to 264 to view the doorknobs.

Discover other items at Rosson House that were purchased via mail-order from our other blog articles: Mail-Order Hardware & Houses, So Metal (about our ornamental metal ceilings), and Fancy Floors (about our parquet wood flooring).