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Interesting music 147 Hans-joachim roedelius

Here's a piece of writing I did on doors and their colours.

Doors of Moniaive

On a trip to Morocco recently I was struck by the beauty of the medina of
Chefchaouen. Its mixture of whitewashed walls and sky blue doors crisp and vibrant under the African spring sky. In fact colour was everywhere; powder
paints, spices and cloth all vying for, and worthy of, excited attention. On my return to Moniaive my eyes, still accustomed to registering extraordinary shape and colour, started to notice the variety, strangeness and beauty in our own backyard. In particular. the doors.

Obviously some were plastic, white and generic but most were possessed of a highly characterful nature. Ancient worn woods, odd metal fatigued handles, grandiose baroque hinges and idiosyncratic knockers, letter boxes and bells abounded. All very interesting but more intriguing were the colour choices.

Why so many different colours? Was it just random and a product of our modern choice based lifestyles or did it really matter to people? If so what were the factors motivating their decisions. Certainly there is a historical perspective, just look at red!

In China a red door is the same as a welcome mat. It also symbolizes luck, so to paint your door red in China would be to welcome people into your home and also encourage good luck to enter. Similarly in early colonial America, a red door was a symbol of a safe haven. Travelers often kept a look out for red doors on homes as signs of welcome and safety. In Catholicism, a red door symbolizes the blood of Christ, which meant once you passed through the door, you were on holy ground. In a similar vein in Ireland a red door is supposed to ward off ghosts and evil spirits. In more prosaic Scotland however, people paint their doors red to indicate they've paid off a mortgage. Albert Einstein apparently painted his door red because he couldn't recognize his house without it!


But what dictates the choices people make now? I decided to do some doorstep
research. Here are some of the responses from my unscientific doorstep interviews on the subject.

Black door

‘I would love to paint my front door a nice bright colour but hubby says no’

Blue door

‘I just painted our front door aqua blue! I like Feng Shui, where door colours are picked by the direction of the door...ours faces west, so metal colors and earth tomes are best-but this year water colors are a good choice too, so I went with the aqua blue’.

And....
‘blue is truly a classic colour. It has universal appeal, never goes out of style. It evokes the sea and sky’.

RED

‘It literally makes me smile when I arrive home from work each day. When the top is open, it means "we're home, please drop in" and our neighbours do!’

VIOLET (in a row of white)

‘It is a stand against blind compliance it expresses my individuality’.

As the eyes are the windows into the soul, so is the front door of our home the
window into our life. As we pass through homes with brightly painted doors, the meaning often eludes us consciously. Subconsciously, however, the reactions we have to colored doors often stay with us long after we leave.

Time to evaluate your choice?