Enoch Robinson left the New England Glass Company after the company sued his brother George for breaking his contract as foreman of the pressing department. The three brothers worked briefly together on Richmond Street, after which Enoch Robinson opened his own locksmith shop at 32 Dock Square, the center of hardware manufacturing and distribution in Boston during the nineteenth century. While his brothers’ company maintained the name G. W. Robinson and Company, Enoch Robinson changed the name of his business at least four times, calling it E. Robinson and Company, Enoch and Company, Enoch and Son, and Enoch Robinson and Company. He sometimes described his business as a locksmith but most often as “locks & knobs.”  ⁹  Although it remains unclear why Enoch Robinson started his own business, it was not because of family conflict. All three brothers lived at the same address in Boston, and they became neighbors when they moved to nearby Somerville in 1847.

In his obituary Enoch Robinson was called a man of “industrious habits, energy, and sterling integrity. Though somewhat eccentric, no man had ever a kinder heart or more generous impulses.”  ¹⁰  His eccentricity is nowhere more evident than in the round house he built for himself in Somerville.  ¹¹  It is one of six built in New England in the nineteenth century that still stood in the mid-twentieth. Architectural historians have studied the house for its unique plan, plank siding, bowed windows, maritime ornament on the exterior, and French inspired decor inside. The source of the plank siding has been attributed to Orson Squire Fowler (1809-1887), a phrenologist and a champion of the octagonal house, while the shape itself has been traced to the folly built in the Desert de Retz in Chambourcy, France, in 1780 and 1781 by Francois Nicolas Henri Racine de Monville (1734-1797) in the shape of a huge, round, ruined, classical column.  ¹²  Inside, Robinson covered his parlor walls with a French scenic paper depicting royalty in castles, gardens, and hunting scenes. The parlor doorknobs were molded glass with a white medallion at the center, sometimes bearing the image of flowers, and sometimes the silhouette of a United States president or other statesman.  ¹³  He hung the curved doors in the library using highly decorated throw hinges with cast finials and extremely wide leaves. The knuckles extended into the room, allowing the door to clear the curved walls when opened. Five bedroom doors on the third floor had porcelain knobs each painted with different flowers or patterns. Each knob is numbered, but the numbers follow no apparent sequence. It is possible the knobs were leftover stock from his shop.  ¹⁴  The only handle on the front door was a brazen dog’s head.  ¹⁵ 

Fascinated by challenges, Enoch Robinson invented perpetual motion machines as a hobby.  ¹⁶  He also obtained a patent for a windlass for raising weights.  ¹⁷  With his fellow hardware manufacturer William Hall (1811-1875) he obtained patents for a lock latch and a window fastener.  ¹⁸  However, most of Robinson’s patents addressed the problem of securing a doorknob to its base. The first of these, which he shared with Francis Draper and Joseph H. Lord, involved a knob fastened to a spindled base by a ferrule screwed into the socket, securing the base of the knob.  ¹⁹  The knob could be glass, ivory, stone, metal, or other material and would stay in place when turning a latch, lock, or bolt. Robinson’s next patent, also with Draper and Lord, was for a method of attaching a knob to the socket by turning over the edge of the socket to grasp the bottom of the knob. This could be done either on a lathe or by heating the socket.  ²⁰  Enoch and his brother George patented a method for attaching a glass knob to a metal socket by cutting a groove around the neck of the knob and then pouring molten metal to fill the socket and the base of the knob.  ²¹  Enoch Robinson thought this method too time consuming and expensive. In addition, air and moisture intruded when the hot metal cooled and contracted from the metal wall of the socket, allowing the decorative silver disk seen through the glass knob to oxidize. In his next patent, the socket was molded around the neck of the knob, thereby preventing the intrusion of air or moisture and allowing the manufacturer to plate the socket during the process.  ²²  The drawings Robinson included with his patent applications show profiles of doorknobs similar to those his company sold. These drawings help collectors identify his hardware.

The industrial revolution provoked a transition from handcraftsmanship to mechanized manufacture. Nonetheless Robinson maintained a successful firm turning out handmade products renowned not only for their reliability but also for their decorative nature. In contrast to larger hardware companies, he kept his stock low, relying on specific orders for the wide variety of hardware he offered in many styles and finishes.

Surviving invoices, a catalogue, a price list, and advertisements reveal the variety of hardware Robinson made.  ²³  An invoice of March 7, 1864, for the Treasury Building project indicates that he carried powder proof bank and safe locks, silver glass doorknobs, padlocks; painted, glass, mineral, wood, and argil knobs; patent door springs; blind and sash fastenings; plated and bronzed butts; French window fixtures; hooks; and door handles. His Catalogue and Price List. of Polished Brass Furniture Trimmings issued in 1888 illustrates polished brass drawer and cabinet handles, hinge plates, real hinges, curtain poles and brackets, door handles, and escutcheon plates. An undated price list refers to handles, escutcheons, plates, and hinges available in nickel-plate or gilt finishes. An advertisement placed by Robinson in Damrell’s Half Century of Boston’s Building describes him as a manufacturer and dealer in house and cabinet hardware; cut-glass knobs from French patterns; brass doorknobs and escutcheons from colonial patterns; and hinge plates and door knockers of “all the old styles.” In other words, he catered to emerging American taste without relinquishing the influence of European hardware.

Enoch Robinson left his estate to his son Albert and his daughter Ann (1829-1907) to be invested to support his wife and other daughters. He asked that the business in Boston be continued only as long as Albert judged it expedient.  ²⁴  Eventually, L.S. Hall, a former clerk and draftsman for Robinson, became the owner of his patents, machinery, and hardware. W.C. Vaughan and Company bought Hall’s shop in 1902 and later entered into a partnership with E.R. Butler & Co., which endures today. The Vaughan archive contains several drawings by Robinson, among them drawings for a colonial brass-plate hinge, colonial door trimmings, and a French window weather strip and bolt. There are also wooden patterns for hardware attributed to the Robinson shop because of their profiles and shanks.

Preuit Hirsch is the manager of foundation relations at the World Monuments Fund in New York City.

For their generous assistance in assembling material for this article I wish to thank Robert Adam, Rhett Butler, Maud L. Eastwood, Tom Hennessy, Dora St. Martin, and Derik Trelstad.