Upon graduation from the Royal College of Art in 1985, Jasper was hired by Nicholas Ward-Jackson to design interiors and furniture for an apartment in Kensington. Jasper designed this door handle for that project, calling it the S due to its shape. Afterwards he made and sold the S Handle to private clients, including a number to the interior designer Doris Saatchi in 1987.
The photograph below was taken in the flat in Kensington. In the photograph, the keyhole has not been attached with screws to the door. Jasper remembers fixing it with bluetack for the photo shoot.
A sketch of the door handle in March 1986, in one of the notebooks Jasper filled while working on the apartment in Kensington.
The S Handle photographed by Richard Davies, in the apartment in Kensington.
A drawing of the handle at a time when Jasper was still producing it himself.
In June 1988, Jasper was approached by FSB, a long-standing German manufacturer of hardware for doors and windows. Jürgen Braun, the company’s managing director, wrote Jasper a letter proposing to produce the S Handle. Alessandro Mendini had recommended Jasper to him, and he had seen a picture of the handle in the May 1988 issue of Domus. Braun wrote: ‘We suppose that you are the designer who has been presented to the public by the DOMUS magazine 77, March 88 [sic], and would like to introduce ourselves as a company specialized in producing nothing else than simple handles. Discovering your very authentic symbol of a door handle we ask you to kindly let us know if you could allow us to produce and to offer this handle to the market.’
As FSB could not find an address for Jasper, they addressed the letter to him at SCP.
Mr Braun’s first letter to Jasper in 1988, and Jasper’s reply by fax. Mr Braun made his response on top of that.
Jasper replied immediately and positively to Mr Braun. He flew to meet him at FSB’s factory in Brakel in July, taking drawings with him. At the time Jasper was spending the summer in Berlin for the Design Werkstatt. Work on an FSB version of the S Handle followed. It had to be modified owing to the standardised sizes of FSB’s roses. In spring 1989, FSB launched its production of the door handle as ‘1166’.
Unfortunately, the necessary changes had wrecked the original’s careful balance of parts, and 1166 remained in production only for a short time. Fortunately, its failure did not end Jasper’s relationship with FSB as work on a new handle was already in progress. The 1144 Handle – first presented in 1990 and available from 1991 – found immediate success. It became ‘Range II’ to the S Handle’s ‘Range I’.