Casa Achilles: Artistic Metal Fittings

Can a lock be the most precious on any given decoration? Yes it can, Casa Achilles proves it, since 1905.

Melting and shaping metals is one of the oldest decorative arts, and there is not just one way to do it. The earliest reasons for existing forges must have been far from aesthetic wishes - swords, jacks, and arms in general - and the forge was certainly the best way to get it by beating the metal while still hot from fire.

A worktop from Casa Achilles' yard, where some sand cast fittings examples can be seen. On the ouverture picture, the showroom witm some cases.

 

Casa Achilles specialized not in forging but in casting, a finer way to obtain a more delicate and crafted form of appearance. And not in any type of casting, but in sand moulds casting.

A Lock, a center table foot and a wall candelabra, some exemples from Casa Achilles' production.

 

From the Casa Achilles workshops, contiguous to the beautiful shop, there are not only locks and hinges, but also wall lights and chandeliers, and components for antique furniture, among other curiosities, waiting for you.

The Achilles' century-old workshop interior.

 

This is the third and last shop on a row – this one is the only still open - from an ensemble started by the same owner at the turn of the nineteen-century, all of them placed, more or less, between Bairro Alto and Príncipe Real, as this one, at Rua de São Marçal. Achilles Santos Frias was a Freemason and a bookish man, in love with theatre and all the other arts, a devotee of the beautiful, after all.

In order to furnish the most beautiful houses and palaces of 1900’s Lisbon, Achilles’s sand casting moulding was ideal to get the exquisite details that still make greatest fame for Casa Achilles. After cast and cooled, the finish was manually engraved so that each angel face or foliage veil would be perfectly finished. Some of the pieces are coated in gold, so that the final effect fulfils its design, and each door or piece of furniture is really special and unique.

The casting via sand mould brought, and still brings, another great asset to Casa Achilles: to be able to replicate exactly any antiquity of this kind that a client requires and which is not found on the market. For this reason, there are many antiquaries?? and furniture restorers, in Portugal and abroad, who find here what is no longer done anywhere.

Some showcases at Casa Achilles entry room, displayed beautifully as classic paintings on a drawing room wall.

 

It is so grand the Casa Achilles charm that the current owner was himself previously a customer who was fascinated by the vast collection (more than 500 years of history on stock), and eventually making this his life’s business.

The Casa Achilles' yard, as it was a century ago, an unchanged early industrial landscape.

 

The Casa Achilles seems always like a little lovely drawing room, finely decorated, where the metallic fittings showcases look like pretty classic paintings. The furniture, historical and chosen on purpose, works wonderfully with the chandeliers and wall lamps that seem to have just arrived from Versailles, or from the Schönbrunn. In a small side door, the scenery changes diametrically, but remains fascinating: it is the workshops, with more than 100 years of built in work, and remembers something that seems coming out from Lord of the Rings, or from Faust studio, in good opera scenery light, under industry colours and still showing, proudly, the original floor ovens.

The workshop office, with roller cover ancient desk, and a component chest of drawers.

 

 

More info here.

 

Photos taken from Casa Achilles website.