Palladio Prima Solid - White Silver 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.

In the case of antiques, a range of views are held on the value of patination and its replacement if damaged, known as repatination.

Preserving a piece’s look and character is important and removal or reduction may dramatically reduce its value. Certain appraisers note that a repatinated piece will be worth more than one with major imperfections in the patina, but less than a piece still with its original finish.

Patina is Father Time’s stamp of approval on many things, and interior doors are no exception. Fashions come and go, but a timeless interior door is an opportunity to disregard the current fad and all the subsequent ones.

The famous O.Henry quote, “New York will be a great place if they ever finish [building] it” is still true more than a century later. The place is always changing. Buildings (with all those interior doors inside) and entire blocks are raised to make room for something ever so new and progressive that may have looked good on paper. There hasn’t been a decade in the history of the city when construction wasn’t in full swing here and there – in all five boroughs.

The city is a perpetual work in progress – but the history is preserved in designated landmark structures: buildings, temples, monuments fortunate enough to receive the plaque stand amid the unceasing storm of change, dignified, beautiful, and wonderfully indifferent towards the vanity and hubris of each generation’s urban planners who are forced, fortunately for those of us who value classics, to build around them.

The structures around Columbus Circle have been razed and replaced numerous times, but the monument on top of the free-standing column remains – easily blending into the ever-changing ensemble around it. Buildings much taller than Trinity Church at the corner of Broadway and Wall Street have sprung up, come down, and sprung up again, but the temple continues on without ever appearing to be out of place. The area around the Empire State Building has been redesigned and rebuilt numerous times, but the enthusiasts determined to preserve the art deco masterpiece finally got the administration to landmark it in 1981, interior doors and all. The neo-Gothic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge have seen epochal developments on both sides of the East River, and the bridge itself has seen some changes (a streetcar line once ran over it). Some of the developments were intriguing, others pretty, still others less so, but the iconic structure remains – strikingly beautiful and timeless.

What do all timeless structures have in common? Patina comes instantly to mind.

In the case of the Palladio interior door collection, patina is applied to the raised moldings by hand. That’s right. Once traditional scratch-resistant and fade-proof finish has been applied, an actual craftsman comes in, armed with an assortment of brushes and a palette (seriously), and the process of patination begins, imparting to the final product – your interior door – an air of timelessness. No matter what kind of interior design you may have, no matter how much it changes in the future, this interior door model will have no problem blending into it – augmenting it, harmonizing it, improving it.