Palladio Uno Solid - White Gold Patina - 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.

Like everything else, interior doors can be new, old, and old-fashioned. The latter is also known as retro – sometimes, which is, when all is said and done, a euphemistic substitute for outdated. This is something to be avoided in interior door manufacturing.

There is an enormous difference between old-fashioned and old things. The latter go by a number of pleasant-sounding, enticing terms such as antique, traditional, classic, time-tested, timeless, and so forth. Things that stand the test of time – fashions, architecture, interior doors, statues, paintings, etc., can only gain in value as the years go by. Some of them become priceless; others – as in the case of certain buildings – become designated historic landmarks, a form of protection the architectural committee extends over them against developers’ plans, which is a wonderful endeavor whose purpose is not just to preserve the history of a city, but also to make sure that beautiful things do not get destroyed in a building boom du jour.

The City Beautiful Movement was a reform philosophy of North American urban planning that flourished during the 1890s and 1900s with the intent of introducing beautification and monumental grandeur in cities. It was a part of the progressive social reform movement in North America under the leadership of the upper- middle class concerned with poor living conditions in all major cities. The movement, which was originally associated mainly with Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City and Washington, D.C., promoted beauty not only for its own sake, but also to create moral and civic virtue among urban populations. Advocates of the philosophy believed that such beautification could promote a harmonious social order that would increase the quality of life. They were quite right.

Instant landmarks suddenly arouse everywhere. The style employed by the movement was a combination of Beaux-Arts and neoclassical (both owing much to the works of Andrea Palladio). In New York, the grand arch and colonnade on the Chinatown side of the Manhattan Bridge were added as part of that movement. It serves no practical purpose whatsoever: its function is to please the eye, no more and no less.

… Now, patina, a thin layer that forms on the surface of copper, brass, bronze, certain stones, and wooden furniture, including certain types of interior doors (the sheen produced by age, wear, and polishing) can be, and oftentimes is, viewed as Father Time’s stamp of approval. There are two types: acquired, i.e. forming naturally through oxidation or other chemical processes) and applied, i.e. added deliberately by the craftsman with an eye to imparting to his creation that magnificent timeless look – as is the case with this entire interior door collection. Once the traditional finish has been applied (white, in this case), our specialist comes over with a bunch of brushes and adds the gold patina to the moldings, using traditional painting methods, including glazing (adding transparent layers on top of each other). Because the Palladio interior door series is a classically designed one, the creators felt they might as well emphasize its timelessness using this method.