SOMETHING SIMPLER

and not so wobbly.
Arquivo Histórico Municipal, Tavira

MORE WOBBLY WOOD DOORS

Arquivo Histórico Municipal, Tavira

PORTUGUESE FRENCH DUTCH DOOR

Private House, Tavira.
The seams over the bottom panels tell us the door leaves open independently, like a Dutch door with a French door look. The bottom panels are simple flat beads, and the glazing bars are profiled like tiny balusters. A vertical beadboard shutter is visible in the transom. Tavira is great!

DOOR

A simple baroque door on the street. Faro.

DOOR DETAIL

Palácio dos Bicainhos (17th century), Braga. Riveted metal door.

DOOR JAMB DETAIL

Palácio dos Biscainhos, Braga

INTERIOR WOOD DOOR

Private House, Rua do Rosário, Porto. Faux-painted and decorated door.

WOBBLY BAROQUE DOOR

Paço Episocopal Bracarense (18th century), Braga. More psychedelia, this time in the form of door panels.

INTERIOR DOOR

Private House, Rua do Rosário, Porto

DECO DOOR HANDLE

Serralves, a door handle over a mirrored door inside a dressing room. Did we mention Ruhlmann worked here? So did Marques da Silva, whose time is coming for a post or two.

THE DARK DOOR OPENING

Mafra, National Palace, inside the main church. João Frederico Ludovice, German and trained in Italy, was the architect.

HARDWARE

Casa de Santa Maria, Cascais, by the architect Raul Lino. Despite his practising of what seems like traditional Portuguese architecture, he is a recurring obsession of the modernist academic establishment, probably for what he preached in his books. Some will be written here about this in the future, as we have lots of pictures coming from our recent Lisbon - Cascais trip.

THE DOORWAY OF THE TOWN HALL

Braga. Although Braga doesn't have a Baroque urban layout like the Sicilian Southeastern towns, its center is a crazy amalgamation of the wildest 18th century designs and, like the Noto Valley, all keeping reasonably within the same language. The Town Hall has the largest scaled volutes around a door ever, inverted and massive. Diagonally placed in plan to welcome the visitor as if with open arms, a scheme widely used throughout the Baroque. The whole composition right up to the complex pediment is an essay on absurdity and plays of scale and distortion. But Trystan Edwards would approve - everything is tightly tied together.