Barreau Fenetre

The French name says it plainly enough: a barred window, of the kind set into a cellar wall, a cell door or the ground floor of an old townhouse where the shutters stopped being enough. This is architectural furniture rather than a figure, a frame with bars running across the opening, and it is exactly the sort of detail that makes a built scene look inhabited. Diorama builders, dolls' house makers and model-railway modellers all reach for parts like this, because a wall stays blank until something is cut into it. Dropped into a gaol scene, a haunted house, a dungeon corridor or a Victorian back alley, one barred opening changes how the whole elevation reads. Worth having on the shelf in its own right too, if you are the sort of collector who likes architectural fragments displayed as small objects.