Mahogany Entryways Doors and Windows
7 November 2008
“The Obvious Choice”
I had several false starts with today’s blog, trying to do something mystical on the subject of doors. I even went so far as to dig out the quote that inspired the name of the ’60s rock group The Doors. If you’re interested, it’s from the writings of William Blake, and it runs, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite.” I have no idea w
hat that means, really, but it’s one of those things that would have caused a lot of strung-out-on-drugs young people in the 60s to say something profound like, “That’s heavy, man.”
But, really, when I think about it, what most intrigues me about Mahogany Entryways is not anything mystical about whatever esoteric meanings we might choose to attribute to doors, but simply the product they produce and the material from which they make it. If there is anything mystical about them, it would simply be their dedication to quality when all around us is a world of poor workmanship and jobs being sent overseas so a handful of fat cats can continue to prosper. But I digress. What I really wanted to talk about is the kind of person who stan
ds over a stack of raw lumber, his heart beating a little faster while he envisions what he will soon make with it. And the wood itself.
Unlike other door companies, Mahogany Entryways, as their name would suggest, uses only mahogany for their doors, and that is a lot of the reason I decided to write about them because my current project is made of Genuine Honduran Mahogany. Why so long a name for mahogany, you ask. Funny you should ask!
Actually, as I found out when I began my project, there are a number of woods being marketed as mahogany, and a lot of them look very much like Honduran Mahogany, African Mahogany being one that immediately comes to mind. But the good stuff is Honduran, which is why it is also known as Genuine Mahogany. The differences revolve around the family of trees they come from, with Caoba being the family of choice, but also with just the wood itself.
Genuine Honduran Maho
gany has a straight, beautiful open grain, and the color ranges from a yellow-brown to a dark red, depending on where it grows. With age it becomes a glorious rich, dark red-brown that just does not look like anything else. I have a coffee table in our family room of Honduran Mahogany, and every year it becomes a little more beautiful. This wood is like wine.
It’s a glorious wood, really, with a wonderful color, and it finishes beautifully. Or that is to say, it can be finished beautifully, because like everything else in life you tend to get out of things what you put into them. Find me someone who is waxing ecstatic over the wood he’s using for his project, and I’m sure to be able to show you a finished project that takes your breath away.
The beauty of these doors pretty much speaks for itself. Both interior and exterior doors can make a statement, and if you use doors like these, you won’t be sorry you did. The one virtue of the other woods masquerading as mahogany, to return for a moment to the discussion with which I started this blog, is that they cost a little less. But really now, aren’t you getting tired of that? We live in a world where everything is made in China on the cheap. Don’t you really wish you had access to a craftsman who cared enough to get the very best wood he could and then loved the craft enough to actually take the time to learn how to do it and to design and produce something that brings grace to any home in which it resides? Then I think your choice is pretty obvious.
Joseph
No comments yet
Leave a Reply