A Victorian Door Takes Six Months to Build
What craftsmanship knows that technology forgot.
A proper Victorian front door takes at least six months to build.
Not because the craftsmen were slow, but because every decision had to be right. The wood had to cure and foundational details like the joints had to be cut by hand. The panels had to be fitted, removed, adjusted, and fitted again. Every layer of shiny glazed paint had to dry before the next one went on.
Most AI strategies take just sixty minutes on a Tuesday afternoon.
One cold autumn morning, I was walking my dog in our London neighborhood. His nails were just clicking along on the cracked and uneven pavement while he pulled at the leash, nose to the ground with new smells. We had just settled here from another country and exploring was a favorite morning activity. I say that, but itâs mostly because my dog insists on morning walks and I decided that was a fine time to explore and maybe get a hot cup of cappuccino in one of those cute little paper cups somewhere along the way.
New to the country, I couldnât understand why a beautiful red stone building with hand-carved beams, and a heavy dark-blue door set with colorful stained glass was right next to a block of grey flats with concrete stairwells. In my foreignerâs mind, I couldnât figure out the cityâs planning method.
Bombs.
Right. Youâd think with all of the English novels I had read that it would have been more obvious. It was actually one of the dads at our sonâs rugby practice who gave me the history refresher course. My incomplete history recollection came flooding back. London doesnât tear things down to make room; it just builds the next century right alongside the previous century. Roman stone, Georgian stucco, and Victorian brick all living together in harmony and delighting visitors and locals, alike, for centuries. But bombs had devastated the city during the eight-month Blitz during WWII, and forever altered the eclectic historical architecture of London.
But not all of it.
Many of the grand Victorian homes, built almost eighty years before anyone imagined bombs falling from the sky, were still standing. The doors were still on solid brass hinges. The stained glass may have been shattered and replaced in places, but the frames and the joints held. The doors werenât built to survive a war, but to survive time. The war just happened to be a part of the story.
After that conversation with Rugby Dad, I stopped walking past the doors and started looking at them. Really looking at them. Then photographing them. Then becoming obsessed by the details. No two were ever alike. The door at number 34 in Hampstead had deep sapphire and ruby stained glass set into a richly glazed blue door with a brass door knob that reflected the afternoon sun. The door at number 75 in Primrose Hill had gone a completely different direction with expanded cut clear glass and pastel layers of paint. Different choices had been made, but with the same attention to detail.
Iâm quite grateful that no one has come out yet to ask me why Iâm taking pictures of their doors as I stand there staring and wondering what it actually took to build something that lasted through events no one could predict.
I immediately joined the Victorian Society in my quest to learn more and I bought their book on how Victorian houses were actually built. I wanted to understand what I was looking at as I walked around London.
I hadnât thought about the connection before, but we used to have a wood shop in our garage. I loved sneaking in when my husband was in the middle of cutting a new piece of timber and I could smell the earthiness of the warm wood as the saw reverberated in loud protest against the grain. In contrast, there was just a whisper as shavings fell to the ground as he used his planer to smooth the wood. Although, he wasnât making Victorian doors (yet), I was in awe of his attention to detail in everything he built.
With Victorian doors, both the destination for the door and the density mattered during wood selection. Was it for a cathedral or a cottage? Did it need to be carved from oak or mahogany? Victorian builders didnât waltz into a timber yard and pick what looked like the shiniest object. They started with a door that needed to exist.
I think the biggest âa-haâ moment for me during research was learning about the traditional Victorian construction method. It wasnât âbuild a door and then go build a frame.â It was built as one system, the âpanel-and-frameâ system that would be able to expand and contract with seasonal (okay almost year roundâŠwe are on an island here) humidity. They actually ARE the frame of the door itself and the panels are fitted inside them. Enduring structure was by design, not accident.
Expert joiners then craft the doors to fit into each frameâs unique âcharacter.â And by character, I mean these homes are from the 19th century have some irregularities, shall we say, with the actual doorway frames that are unique to each structure. Itâs enough to make one truly miss originality in a sea where everything looks the same, in the interest of mass production. Victorian doorway frames have to accommodate walls that have bowed after generations of settling, with openings that vary by centimeters even within the same house. Systems that stand the test of time are designed around the ability to adapt from the beginning.
For AI, governance isnât something you add to your AI system as an afterthought. Itâs the foundational structure that determines whether anything you build will last.
Where the real longevity test comes in is during the curing process. Old-growth timber has to dry properly or it warps under pressure. It canât be rushed. If you rush the process, you get a door that looks magnificent upon installation, but canât even weather the mildest soggy, cold, wet winters in England. Okay, fine, and wet springs and sometimes wet autumns.
That analogy doesnât make sense when I think about enduring craftsmanship and our technology world today. Except when it does. While pilot programs look great in a demo, they collapse under real conditions when results are rushed. The rush to ship copycat AI products with minor tweaks is tempting, but rarely survives reality in the market. The companies that are seeing success during this AI feeding frenzy are the ones quietly taking the time to create outside of the hype.
As I write this, signs of spring are popping up all over London. Bright yellow daffodils and pink magnolia trees decorate the homes. Itâs also peak muddy rugby season, which affords me many opportunities to see these beautiful Victorian doors in their original habitats on the way to the pitch.
I still photograph doors as I walk along the city streets, but I donât see doors anymore.
I see designers who built a legacy.
