Palladio Uno Solid - Black - Swing

Here’s one very special interior door, the cornerstone of the Palladio collection of traditionally designed interior doors. As it is with all of the Palladio doors, the design was inspired by the great architect Andrea Palladio, the father of the eponymous architecture style. Made of natural wood, elegantly simple, easy on the eyes, and finished with the patina finish of your choice.

All Palladio interior doors are solid core. Here at Almes, this means that the fiberboard inside is made of natural wood fibers. Highly resistant to warping, the material also provides off the chart sound proofing and thermal insulation qualities. The veneer covering is then finished using traditional finishing methods (you pick the color) and gold or silver patina is then applied to the moldings by hand. That’s right: an actual artist applies it with a brush. The final product has a distinct Baroque feeling, which is in keeping with the main idea behind this interior door collection.

… Padua, the birthplace of Andrea Palladio, is a city in Northern Italy, some twenty-five miles west of Venice. It hosts the University of Padua, founded in the Thirteenth Century, where Galileo once lectured on geometry, mechanics, and astronomy while also making significant discoveries in fundamental science (kinematics of motion and astronomy) as well as applied science (strength of materials, the telescope, and some other things).

Straddling the Bacchiglione River whose various branches surrounded the ancient walls like a mote, the city is quite picturesque, with a dense network of arcaded streets opening into large squares, and a large number of bridges. The city is rumored to be the oldest in Northern Italy. Historians claim it once successfully repulsed Spartan, Etruscan, and Gallic invasions, and formed an alliance with the Romans in the Third Century B.C. against common enemies (including, one must hasten to add, Carthage). Even though it was gradually assimilated into the Roman Republic, the denizens of the city had the reputation for bravery and love of independence.

It is often said that Palladio’s works “have been valued for centuries as the quintessence of High Renaissance calm and harmony.”

To be sure, the basic elements of Italian Renaissance structure, including Doric columns, lintels, cornices, loggias, pediments and domes had already been used before Palladio. His contribution was to refine, simplify, and use them in innovative ways.

His style employed a classical repertoire of elements in new ways. Each part of the building has a function, and this function is clearly expressed by its form, particularly the ceremonial floor known as the piano nobile. Even though he specialized in villas and palaces, he insisted on simplifying the forms, as attested by Villa Capra “La Rotonda,” with all those perfectly square facades surrounding the circular dome and interior (something you must see next time you visit there).

Even though inspired by classical Roman architecture, Palladio did not imitate it outright. Rather, he juxtaposed the ideas of antiquity to those of High Renaissance builders, who at that time (he felt) were already paying too much attention to ornamentation and too little to the overall harmony of the project.

Can interior doors come off as elegantly formal? Absolutely.

Should your interior doors look elegantly formal? That would largely depend on the overall appearance of your interior design. Or would it?

The color black only recently came into its own as a symbol of elegance – by historical standards, anyway. Singularly enough, neither the ancient Egyptians, nor Greeks, nor Romans, nor medieval aristocracy (most of it, anyway) thought of it in this manner. One would think that one of the reasons for this may have been the fact that colorful dyes and paints were more difficult to produce in large quantities – and one would be wrong.

In fact, genuine black was astoundingly expensive to produce. “Imported oak apples” were used in the early Sixteenth Century, when it represented wealth among Spanish aristocrats and Dutch merchants. Curiously, in the early Eighteenth Century, black represented romance and artistry in Europe and the Colonies.

Be that as it may, the color became popular during the interval separating the American and French revolutions, when it began to be associated with formal attire for men. This had a great deal to do with the changes in military methodology. The improved artillery and firearms rendered the sword obsolete except as a decorative part of the officer’s attire. Full-length trousers replaced stockings, the doublet yielded to the tails jacket, and suddenly young men, including those in the military, began to refer to the sword as “the hanger” that only had to be worn at gatherings with lots of “old timers” present.

Some habits sit too deep, and high-ranking officers continued to carry swords – decorative or otherwise – for quite some time afterwards. George Washington, to pick a name at random, always wore one.

That said, from the early Nineteenth Century on a gentleman was expected to wear a black suit, not just to formal events, but to pretty much any large gathering. The top hat, the jacket, the trousers, and the boots were black. Some interior doors were, too.

You don’t need to take my word for it. Just go ahead and examine closely Edouard Manet’s celebrated painting titled Masked Ball at the Opera, which today hangs at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

(By the way. The place depicted in the painting, the interior doors and all, is not the Palais Garnier, a.k.a. “Paris Opera,” as one would expect. That storied structure was still under construction in the year 1873 – two years away from completion, in fact. No, no, this was a different opera house, the one on the Rue La Pelitier, a few blocks away from today’s Metro stop, that burned down shortly afterwards. Don’t you fret: the tradition of throwing balls at the opera continued once Charles Garnier’s project was finally finished – inspired and blessed by both Eugene Hausmann and Napoleon III. And, yes, the men attending those soirees were still obliged to wear black – as they are today. Didn’t you know? Today’s Palais Garnier does have a dress code! And, yes, men are still asked politely to wear a three-piece black suit or go sit at the Café de la Paix across the street, believe it or not).

Time continued seriously to pass. In the year 1926 Coco Chanel published a picture of a calf-length, straight, simple black dress in Vogue. It was calf-length, straight and decorated only by a few diagonal lines. It has been known as “the little black dress” ever since, and a staple at cocktail parties. Hollywood’s films only helped its vast popularity.

Elegantly formal interior doors can be a great addition to your decor because they go with anything. Whatever your preferences – slick and ultra-modern, traditional, or Baroque – black interior doors will blend in easily into, augment, or improve your interior design.