A ring of flat bar with a solid round boss at its hub sits across the centre joint, split down the middle where the two leaves meet. Flat pickets run the full height on both sides with no solid panel, under a top rail that sweeps up out of each post in an S to a peak over the joint. Dark, close to black, with a low sheen, hung between stone-clad pillars on a concrete drive.
The circle is cut where the leaves part, and the boss at its hub is cut with it — that is the whole idea. Closed, the ring is one figure and the meeting stiles run straight through it; opened, each leaf carries half of it away, so the ornament is what tells you the gate has moved. Nothing else on either leaf competes for that.
One clear idea rather than a filled field is the opposite instinct to the Inman Gate, where every square inch of the leaf is worked. Pickets top to bottom also leave the view through it open, which suits a drive with something at the end of it worth seeing before you are through the gate.
2 photos
Every angle
