English: 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."
Date
between 1450 and 1500
date QS:P571,+1500-00-00T00:00:00Z/6,P1319,+1450-00-00T00:00:00Z/9,P1326,+1500-00-00T00:00:00Z/9
(Late Medieval)
Medium
carved oak
Dimensions
without hinges: 174 × 91.9 × 4.3 cm (68.5 × 36.1 × 1.7 in)
This work is free and may be used by anyone for any purpose. If you wish to use this content, you do not need to request permission as long as you follow any licensing requirements mentioned on this page.
The Wikimedia Foundation has received an e-mail confirming that the copyright holder has approved publication under the terms mentioned on this page. This correspondence has been reviewed by a Volunteer Response Team (VRT) member and stored in our permission archive. The correspondence is available to trusted volunteers as ticket #2012021710000834.
This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer.
You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States.
to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
to remix – to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license as the original.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.htmlGFDLGNU Free Documentation Licensetruetrue
Captions
Add a one-line explanation of what this file represents
== {{int:filedesc}} == {{Walters Art Museum artwork |artist = French |title = ''Door with Cat Hole'' |description = {{en|This door, carved with a linen-fold decoration, was probably a back or interior door of a middle-class h...