Palladio Prima Solid - Ivory Gold Patina - Swing

The Palladio interior door collection includes this three-panel interior door with raised moldings especially for those who, like certain ancient Greek architects, are fond of symmetry. It is in keeping with Andrea Palladio’s principles of taking inspiration from classical antiquity themes.

The usual wonderful Almes features are all present, including the Italian-made 3D-adjustable self-lubricating concealed hinges that make the installation easy, efficient, and quick as well as ensure comfortable operation (this interior door never creaks). There is also the soundless magnetic lock whose mechanism never gives out due to the absence of moving parts; and the automatic sweep activated whenever the door is closed which gives the owner privacy as well as take the sound-proofing and thermal insulation qualities of this interior door to the next level.

An assortment of excellent finishes is available for this interior door: please study those carefully before picking the one that best suits your decor.

So, what does it take for an interior door designer to come up with something like this model, to reach this level of visual simplicity without sacrificing any of the classic elegance?

Well, to begin with, any follower of Palladio’s principles has to turn to the source first, which would necessitate a trip to northern Italy and, specifically, the Veneto region. All those villas (with all those interior doors!) are just waiting to be explored, and discover first-hand how the brilliant builder deviated from the Renaissance themes that were all the rage back then. His urban period followed these early efforts, when he began to get commissions for luxurious palaces from affluent city dwellers. Palazzo Chiericati in Vicenza is especially informative in that sense. Its principal facade is composed of three bays, the central bay projecting slightly, with two superposed orders of columns, Doric on the lower level and Ionic above.

The designer would then need to move on to the “rustic suburban” and just suburban villas, and spend some time at the Villa Cornaro, a type of country house the builder practically invented – designed for both country living and entertaining noble guests.

He or she would then have to move on to the most famous suburban villa constructed by Palladio called La Rotonda, sitting on a gentle wooded hilltop, with views of the countryside in all directions. It is perfectly symmetrical, with four identical facades and porticos around the domed center. It became especially influential in the United States, where it inspired so-called "Neo-Palladianist" buildings, including the third President’s own creation in Monticello (interesting interior doors, by the way).

With all of the above in mind, the designer would then have to return to the workshop and start working on this interior door. From a series of sketches to miniature models to blueprints, the process would have to involve a lot of hard work, making sure that the final product not only looked and felt like an interior door Palladio himself would install – in any of his villas – but was also in keeping with contemporary technical and aesthetic requirements.

When it comes to picking a finish for your Palladio interior door model, you might want to consider how well it would complement, blend into, or improve your decor – naturally. There are, to be sure, other considerations as well.

Ivory is one of the large spectrum of off-white colors with a history that goes back to ancient Egypt, but the first recorded use of the word in English was in the Fourteenth Century, with the ivory trade reaching industrial proportions three hundred years later, when Siberia was incorporated into what would later come to be known as the Russian Empire. It really took off a hundred years later, when the demand for ivory products began to grow exponentially throughout the world. Ornamental boxes, billiard balls, false teeth, dominoes, ivory carvings, fans, and, above all, piano keys were made of mammoth tusks. Wooly mammoth remains were found everywhere in that region, well-preserved in the permafrost, and theories proliferated on that particular animal whose existence ceased suddenly, it would seem, sometime during the Holocene epoch. It is worth noting that even today, centuries later, the mammoth is still, to a large degree, a mystery. They were big, robust animals who roamed freely around the tundra, fearless and, it would seem, peaceful – until one day something just happened. The research on what happened, exactly, is still ongoing.

Be that as it may, the vast majority of piano keys dating back to the Nineteenth Century and earlier – you can see these instruments in most museums, in the section dedicated to the late Baroque period, such as the one in the American section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City – is made of the wooly mammoth tusk. Siberian export, let us hasten to add, may have saved the lives of countless elephants and walruses: no one could compete with the sheer volume of ivory arriving from beyond the Ural Mountains.

Today’s commercially produced ivory is, thankfully, synthetic (including the pigment we use in this interior door finish, of course). The color is wonderful: easy on the eyes, neither too loud nor excessively diffuse; soothing; and blending easily into pretty much any color scheme.

Oh, and did you know? The patination is done by hand. That’s right. Once the finish is ready (as it is with all Almes finishes, it is scratch-resistant and fade-proof), an actual expert craftsman, armed with an assortment of artist brushes, comes to work on the raised moldings. The gold patina, carefully and lovingly applied, gives the finished product character and an air of timelessness, an invaluable asset when it comes to decor changes. Whether your interior design is classic, traditional, or ultra-modern, no matter how many changes you make to it, these interior doors will continue to fit in seamlessly into it: that is one of the great secrets of this interior door collection popularity, as well as a tribute to the great Venetian architect Andrea Palladio, who valued overall harmony above all else. Next time you’re in Northern Italy, you might want to check out some of those palaces and villas.