Founded in 2019 · In homage to 1878
Heritage and history
Heritage
The inventor
Osbourn Dorsey
Who is Osbourn Dorsey?
On 10 December 1878, Osbourn Dorsey was granted United States patent No. 210,764 for a door-holding device, a mechanism to hold a door open, release it and let it close, quietly and without a hand.
He is remembered for a single drawing: a rod, a lever, a catch. It belongs to the small family of inventions that made a door something you operate rather than something you push. The house takes his name, and its first piece bears it.
Washington, D.C. · 1878
A house built on one gesture
O DOORSEY takes its name from Osbourn Dorsey, who in 1878 patented a device to hold a door open, release it and let it close. Everything we make descends from that gesture: the door as a mechanism of welcome, drawn with restraint, in materials that age with grace. A house for those who believe the smallest detail carries the whole of an interior.
Heritage
The patent
Washington, D.C. · 1878
Door-holding device
Patent No. 210,764, granted 10 December 1878. Five figures, one idea: the door held, released and returned.
Heritage
Willenhall
West Midlands, England
Willenhall, the town of locks
For more than three centuries, Willenhall has been the heart of British lock and key making. In the workshops behind its terraced houses, generations of locksmiths filed keys and fitted mechanisms by hand, built to outlast the doors they closed.
It is here, in the Black Country, that every O DOORSEY piece is drawn: the same patience, the same respect for an object that is touched every day.
52.5858° N, 2.0590° W