A cast bronze door handle made by the firm of Collins & Co, Leicester, circa 1905.

The door handle is a great example of the work of Collins & Co. The firm was started by William H. Pick who had strong links to the Leicester School of Art and was a personal friend of the School’s headmaster, Benjamin Fletcher, Pick was himself a designer and craftworker but he is also known to have made up designs by other eminent members of the Leicester School of Art including Robert Jackson Emerson and John Sidney Reeve. In 1912, Pick joined forces with Harry Peach to form the Dryad Metal Works.

This particular design appears in the book ‘Harry Peach – Dryad and the DIA’ which shows a collection of early Collins & Co metalwork. Similar designs of door handles were continued for a while by the Dryad Metal Works. However this one is unmarked so I am confident it is an earlier version. The swirling Art Nouveau design is quite sculptural and to me feels very much like the work of Robert Jackson Emerson.