The Bastion Doors

Pair of 17th-century Tuscan antique fir doors with nailed sheet-metal cladding and defensive ironwork, from an early modern bastion in the Siena–Arezzo area – 100 × 200 cm (h) each

Not all antique doors were made for the same purpose. Some were simply meant to close off a room. Others were made to protect what they guarded. This pair clearly belongs to the second kind.

Made in Tuscany in the 1600s, they are built in fir and still retain, on the more exposed side, their original nailed sheet-metal armour. The structure itself is entirely timber; where extra protection was needed, iron was added. It is immediately clear this was not an aesthetic choice, but a practical solution designed to last.

The metalwork is made of overlapping straps laid in a diamond pattern and fixed with dense hand-driven nails. It is not a simple covering: it works with the wood, protecting it and reinforcing it exactly where the door was most exposed. Between Siena and Arezzo, in the 17th century, bastions and garrison buildings often relied on doors like these—“armoured” to withstand blows and attempted break-ins.

Up close, you realise how many hours of work are built into them. Each iron strap was shaped, fitted, nailed and clenched one by one. Hinges, plates, bolts and reinforcements show two crafts working on the same piece: the carpenter builds the leaf, and the blacksmith completes it, making it stronger still.

On the opposite side everything changes. What remains is the more essential timber face, with traces of the old colouring and the marks left by centuries of use. Patches, added reinforcements and modifications are not flaws: they speak of a time when an object like this was kept in service—repaired, adapted, and made to keep doing its job.

They have become fascinating precisely because no one ever made them to be. Today they no longer have the task of defending a bastion, yet they retain their ability to give a house real character. The iron, the wood, the material surface and the labour they carry cannot be reproduced—only preserved. And it is exactly this authenticity that creates interiors that feel personal, believable, and impossible to replicate with mass-produced pieces.