Alluminio Elivia Horizontal Wood Grain 2HS - Black Apricot - Swing

This unique interior door model is a combination of a number of our design techniques, with equally high levels of dependability and elegance.

Why horizontal? No mystery here. Horizontal in this case means the direction, or, to be more precise, longitudinal orientation, of the wood grain.

That’s not everything, though.

Just think of the two standard printing paper orientations, portrait and landscape. Indeed, most portraits (and I mean portraits painted – in oil, on canvas – by  experienced artists) … Where was I? Ah, yes: most of them are vertical, whilst the vast majority of landscapes (painted by honest artists, etc), from Old Masters to Impressionists and beyond, tend to be horizontal, with few exceptions. The reason for this is that each honest artist seeks to convey the impression of vastness first and foremost, as if asking the viewer to look to their right, then to their left, and then to their right again, and imagine all that great space continuing past the frame.

Likewise, as it is with this particular interior door model, the horizontal orientation of the wood grain will create for the viewer an impression of superior width of the room in which it (the door, that is) installed. It is a simple and innocent enough concept that nonetheless can greatly improve your decor by adding visual space to it.

As for the two horizontal stripes (2HS), the design was inspired by a sign in musical notation called longa, consisting of two parallel lines framed by two vertical stems. It was widely used liberally back at the dawn of today’s musical tradition – which is to say, at the beginning of the Renaissance – as a symbol for a quadruple whole note (that’s one hell of a long note, wouldn’t you agree? Four bars? Wow). Each time, the note would have to be so perfectly placed in the score, and of such celestial quality, that you didn’t want it ever to stop sounding.

What does this have to do with interior doors? Simple: as a timely longa summarized and harmonized the entire music piece for the listener, so will this interior door impart a sense of perfect overall harmony to your décor, inviting you to enjoy the moment for as long as possible. It is soothing. It is friendly. As all interior door models in the Elivia collection, this one is highly elegant and easy on the eyes. It comes in a great variety of finishes and in all standard configurations.

I hasten to add that, like all Elivia interior doors, this one comes with all the usual wonderful features: excellent state-of-the-art hardware, including the Italian-made 3D-adjustable self-lubricating concealed hinges, soundless magnetic locks, and the automatic sweep; superior sound-proofing and thermal insulation qualities; warp-resistance; flawless operation.

Moreover, the process through which the finish is applied to this interior door works on molecular level, called “stretching,” which combines – nay, fuses – the materials, so that the final product is no longer a combination of components but rather a monolith, not unlike an obelisk formed of a single block of stone.

Is this finish a good match for your interior door?

Saronno, a tiny commune in Lombardy, a sub-Alpine region in the north of Italiy, is famous for its almond kernel cookies (called amaretti in local parlance) and, naturally, Amaretto, a world-famous liqueur that is a staple at Manhattan cafes and California beach parties. While traditionally it is supposed to take its distinctive, instantly recognizable flavor from bitter almonds, most modern brands are prepared from a base of apricot pits. According to legend, a Saronno church once commissioned Bernadino Luini, one of Leonardo’s more passionate pupils, to cover the walls of its newly renovated sanctuary with frescoes. Interior doors weren’t mentioned. Luini was such an ardent (and gifted) follower of Leonardo’s technique that some of his works were attributed to Leonardo (until, armed with the most advanced scientific tools, a bunch of uncompromising experts produced evidence to the contrary, but that’s a story for another day). He is especially known today as the author of “graceful female figures with elongated eyes,” as one expert put it.

What does any of this have to do with interior doors? Read on.

Among other things, because the church was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, one of the artist’s main tasks was to depict the Madonna. The picky painter spent quite some time trying to secure the services of the right model, finally lighting on a young widowed innkeeper who seemed to have all the right qualities and features. They may or may not have become lovers. Out of gratitude, the young lady decided to give the artist a present. Her very modest means would not allow her to splurge. She figured she might as well get creative. She locked herself in the kitchen (one wonders what the inn’s interior doors looked like), she spent some time experimenting. Eventually, steeping apricot kernels in brandy, she presented the resulting beverage to a very grateful, as well as pleasantly surprised, artist. Coincidentally, Luini’s palette features a lot of black, a manner not too many painters can get away with without coming across as bumptious, overbearing, or just tacky. Case in point: many of the French Impressionists renounced black paint altogether, substituting indigo, burnt umber, or a mixture of the two, when they needed to use dark tones. Luini’s trick is in the general pattern he follows when applying black and distributing it in a composition: a pattern in many ways resembling an apricot kernel’s ridges, bulges, and edges. Rather than upstaging the rest of the colors, Luini’s apricot-inspired black brings them all together in a clever, romantic way.

That is something to keep in mind when you choose apricot black as the finish for your interior doors. When thoughtfully applied to interior doors, it can serve as a compliment to your creative thinking, not to mention the joy of knowing that you’re on the same page as one of the beloved Old Masters.