Thanks safeman & Adrian. Keep them coming.....

The Rosengrens is amazing- I wonder what GP would have made of it..........I thus wonder, if indeed the heavy bolt work did move with such pleasantness as it's appearance?

I think we need a new thread on here for ornate safes like that. George price did perhaps have a valid point, but many were just simple surface adornments on what were already tough and proven safes underneath, so I think they have some importance and deserve a place in history.

A few of the old British manufacturers offered furniture and Ladies' jewel/boudoir safes, but they never seemed to match the ornamentation of the European manufacturers- Germany and Austria seemed to excel with them. Fichet also made some very ornate ones. in fact they still offered 'Louis' styled furniture safes into the early 1990s. They were based on one of their earlier compact production safes (JN20 or Egide? from memory)with the addition of cast steel 'cabriole' style legs and cast brass ornamentation. I remember being told that the wood grain effect wasn't laminated or applied veneer- it was actually hand painted on by a factory worker, and when he retired they simply dropped the range. I'll see if I can dig out a brochure- think the price was about £1200 for the bigger one back in about 1983.

safeman- that's amazing that a Tann Diamond was attacked- they might as well have turned up with pea shooters....

Adrian that's a great Garny safe- just when I thought there wasn't another style of bolt throw handle that hasn't been seen before you show that I've never seen the Differential version of the lock but have many Protectors- I have a soft spot for them. Most I've talked to had a real dislike for them because of the problems with re-keying and availability. The pipe keys needed regular cleaning as did the sliding shaft- that meant call-outs and work All the locks I saw were sealed to deter disassembly, but they were always so reliable it didn't really matter- to me at least, they were superb locks.

Also, it always amazed me how many safe engineers didn't seem to get the concept of the shuttle and shaft- it's ingenious- 6 inch thick door, 3 inch long key. Likewise, 25 inch thick door, still a 3 inch long key. Simply brilliant- no foot long key stems to bend or break, no fiddling with small detachable key bits etc, and yet I was told it's purpose was everything from anti-pick to anti-explosive. Don't think so- just 3 small exposed bezel screws on the front and the whole assembly could be removed clean out the door, so I don't think it's purpose was very anti-pick or anti-explosive. The safes always had big glass plates and plenty of relockers for the explosives side, and lets face it the Kromer Protector itself provided plenty of anti-pick!

Perhaps the early versions before the days of tempered glass plates, were fitted in such a way as to be immovable from the door. That I could understand would then give extra protection over the lock against picks and explosives, but the concept of a short compact high security key, no matter how big or thick the door is, to me at least is pure genius.

BTW before I get timed out yet again, the SLS gem is still up for sale despite a sale price of $50,000- Lackasafe still have it listed on their site with the caption "Everything proof"