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Door with Cat Hole

Anonymous (French)

1450-1500 (Late Medieval)

carved oak

without hinges: 68 1/2 x 36 3/16 x 1 3/4 in. (174 x 91.9 x 4.39 cm)

Description
This door, carved with a linen-fold decoration, was probably a back or interior door of a middle-class home. It is remarkable for its cat hole. Few doors with cat holes have survived from this early period, but the 14th-century English writer Geoffrey Chaucer described one in the "Miller's Tale" from his Canterbury Tales. In the narrative, a servant whose knocks go unanswered, uses the hole to peek in: "An hole he foond, ful lowe upon a bord/ Ther as the cat was wont in for to crepe,/ And at the hole he looked in ful depe,/ And at the last he hadde of hym a sighte."
Additional Information

Museum purchase with funds provided by the S. & A. P. Fund, 1969

64.164

Centre Street: Third Floor: The Knight’s Hall

France


Provenance

Baron Cassel van Doorn; Blumka Gallery, New York, November, 1969; Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, 1969, by purchase.

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