Lock Smith out...

In language and imagery, the key is both a symbol and very useful object. We talk about the key to the situation, with the same aplomb that we guard those items that allow access to our domestic and business kingdoms. The key came with the invention of the door, and the door has a particular importance as it opens and closes, makes visible and conceals. This has endowed the entrance door to a building with magical significance. In many cultures, the door is the subject of ritual, i.e., first-footing and carrying the bride over the threshold. The exit and entrance are one and the same, a fact not lost on surrealist artists like Salvador Dali (1904 – 1989) and Max Ernst (1891 – 1976). In their paintings, open doors and windows appear as figurative routes to other modes of consciousness.
Ali Baba elided the key business with his cry of ‘open sesame’, but it is known that simple keys existed in ancient Greece and Rome. By medieval times, the chatelaine or keeper of the castle wore her keys on a belt on her waist, not only for convenience but as a visible symbol of her authority. By now, the key was also a symbol of power. In numerous medieval paintings, St Peter is seen holding a large key. The trade of locksmith had its own guild, the word ‘smith’ conferring a dark respectability to those with the knowledge to mysteriously open locked doors. The symbol of the guild was, of course, a key. By Enlightenment, people in high places began to take an interest in keys. Louis the Sixteenth was, reputedly, an amateur locksmith, a skill that did not save him and spouse, Marie Antoinette from an unfortunate end on the guillotine. Keys crept into literature.
In Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens, locksmith Gabriel Varden is held to ransom until he opens the doors of Newgate prison. It is an act of protest by Chartist rioters, one that echoes the storming of the Bastille, in France. Alas, the danger to key-holding citizens have become all to apparent in our times. Many traditional entry systems have been replaced by magnetic cards, voice recognition, eye and face scanners, though these can be just as hazardous to the entry-authorized subject. When you think about it, it is better to have an object that you can throw to the infidels, and run...