Palladio Uno Solid - White Silver 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.

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.