Englert holds the keys to just about everything

UW research scientist David Englert is studying how to pick locks. That doesn’t mean, however, that you need to hide your valuables when he’s around. His interest is purely recreational. He swears he only needs to know how to pick locks so he can open the many locks at his home that are missing keys. And why has he lost so many keys? He hasn’t lost them. He never had them in the first place.

Confused? Well there is an explanation. Englert, whose day job is to maintain some sophisticated equipment in Chemical Engineering, is a collector who owns more than a million keys and thousands of locks. They come from all over the world and originally opened jails and homes, rice storage facilities and dormitory rooms. Some are as old as the first century and some as recent as the twentieth. Englert is eclectic in his tastes and a saver by nature. He doesn’t collect to trade or sell. He collects to learn and to experience.

Why locks and keys? Englert has a hard time answering that question. His father, he explains, collected many things, including a shoebox full of keys. So, when Englert found a key he would offer it to his father, and his father would say “keep it for your own collection.” After his father’s death Englert forgot all about keys—until 1982. He was in Wiesbaden, Germany working as a volunteer for a youth organization, and was given a tour of the dormitories.

“They were just switching over from old fashioned locks to modern ones, so I asked them what they were going to do with the old keys,” Englert says. “When they told me the keys would be thrown away, I said I’d take them.”

There were 200 keys all told, probably only about 50 years old, but they were enough to open the door to a lifetime obsession for Englert. The very next week he was in the south of France and met a man who had a metal reclamation junk yard. The man sold him about 600 keys for 90 French francs, about $15. Those were the first of many dollars Englert has spent on his collection.

A two-year employee at the UW, Englert’s job is to maintain the Electron Spectroscopy for Chemical Analysis (ESCA) instruments and the Time of Flight SIMS. These are both techniques used to analyze the surface of materials. Although he’s not an engineer, Englert has long been fascinated with all things mechanical—thus his interest in keys and locks. He became familiar with the high-tech instruments when he worked for their manufacturer, traveling the world installing them and teaching others how to use them. The traveling was a convenient way to indulge his passion for keys and locks. No matter where he found himself, he devoted his off hours to cruising the flea markets, antique stores and junk shops in search of new items for his collection.

Acquiring the keys and locks, Englert says, is half the fun of collecting. He jokes that he has “101 stories” about his efforts. Once, for example, he and his wife encountered a buyer and seller of used furniture in Brussels who wanted to sell them two keys. The man spoke little English and Englert speaks little French, so they struggled to communicate.

“He kept saying he had two ‘gyles’ keys,” Englert says. “We looked in our French-English dictionary for something that sounded like that but couldn’t find anything. It turned out he was trying to say ‘jail.’ He had bought a set of furniture from a jail, and on the bottom of one of the chairs, these two keys were fastened.”

Englert later took the keys—large, heavy keys about 10 inches long—to an antique dealer and learned that one of them was 300 years old. Both keys were for cells in the jail.

These and many other keys in Englert’s collection are “warded” keys, those old-fashioned-looking gems that usually have an oval on one end, then a straight shaft, then a square portion that opens the actual lock mechanism. Although the technique used today in yale locks—the kind that are straight on top and have a jagged edge underneath—had been invented before the birth of Jesus, Romans decided to use warded locks instead, and spread them everywhere they went. Yale locks were patented in the mid-19th century in the United States and quickly became the dominant lock because they are more difficult to pick.

Learning history like this is part of Englert’s fascination with collecting. Along with the keys and locks themselves, he also collects books about them. Once, when he found an interesting book in a university library and was told he couldn’t check it out, he paid $90 to have the whole book copied so he could have it for his collection.

These days, Englert has become more specialized in what he collects. He has a complete set of Ford Model T keys and is looking for the holder that was made to hang them on. And he collects keys for winding pocket watches. In the heyday of such watches, he explains, a buyer would receive a brass or steel key to go with the watch. However, it was also possible to buy silver or gold keys, some of which were custom made and included hand carved embellishments. Englert has paid as much as $300 or $400 for some of these, including one that has a ferret carved on it.

Although she doesn’t share his passion for locks and keys, Englert’s wife has been tolerant of his collecting, he says. But she has her ways of getting even. Once, when the couple was in France, she told him she wanted to buy a set of Limoges china, so they went to the factory where it is made.

“I looked around and said, ‘Wait a minute, $120 a plate,’ ” Englert recalls. “Then my wife said, ‘Yes, and how much have you spent on your keys?’ ” Mrs. Englert got her Limoges.

But she won’t be getting rid of all those keys and locks that threaten to take over the couple’s home. Englert never sells or trades what he buys, which means his collection just keeps getting larger. “Even if I were housebound I think I would have enough to do to keep me busy-just categorizing and cleaning what I have,” he says. “I’m sure I’ll be at this the rest of my life.” ¶

Nancy Wick, College of Engineering