Alluminio Elivia Horizontal Wood Grain 4HS - Black Apricot - Swing

You read it here first: this interior door model, part of the Elivia collection, was inspired by the bouzouki, a legendary four-string musical instrument imported into Greece by immigrants from the Anatolian region around the year 1900. It was then further perfected by Greek craftsmen, following which it made it all the way to Ireland sixty years later. Somehow, the Irish found it delightful.

It produces sounds resembling those of the traditional mandolin, only finer and more pronounced, and the playing technique is somewhat different.

Wait a minute, you might say. Wasn’t this interior door collection, the Elivia family, inspired by Elizabethan romanticism?

Yes. It would be silly of us to deny it.

That said, each individual model has an additional source (or two) of inspiration. In this case, should you ask the designers, they’ll tell you it was the spirit of the entire history of music, from Roman Anatolia with their major diatonic scale to contemporary Irish tunes. Pretty neat, wouldn’t you say? The instrument – just like this interior door – is quintessence of harmony and elegance.

Oh, and did we mention this? It does come with all the usual Almese interior door amenities, such as the state-of-the-art hardware, including the 3D-adjustable concealed hinges, magnetic locks, automatic sweep, etc., and a dozen highly attractive finishes for you to choose from. It is also warp-resistant and scratch-resistant.

Why horizontal, though? Well, I thought you’d never ask!

Horizontal in this case means the direction, or, to be more precise, longitudinal orientation, of the wood grain.  

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. Most, not all. But still …

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. You can’t have too much visual space.

The space-creating trick was known to the ancient Greek architects, who perfected it. They referred to it as “optical correction.” Indeed, no proper Greek temple, theatre, or palace was constructed without resorting to it. Next time you’re in Athens, take a long good look at the Parthenon. Note that the columns are tilted inward and the bottom of the façade slopes from the center to the sides: all this so that the structure would appear perfectly geometrical to the viewer positioned a hundred yards from the entrance.

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.