Alluminio Elivia Horizontal Wood Grain 2HS - Cherry - 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.

Very few paint jobs from Greek and Roman times are still extant (and even fewer interior doors), but whatever evidence we have of that scintillating epoch’s tastes would suggest that Cherry was the interior door finish of choice. The combination of the color and wood grain will impart warmth and cheeriness to any interior door model, clash with nothing, and be easy on the eyes – every time!

During the eight centuries of its turbulent and instructive existence (more, if you count the eastern half that continued on well into the Middle Ages), the Roman Empire experienced a large number of construction booms, each grander, more glorious, and encompassing more territory than the previous one; each transforming, and augmenting, and oftentimes improving upon everything built previously.

Octavian Augustus, technically the first Roman Emperor, famously boasted that he “found Rome a city of bricks” and was “leaving it a city of marble.” He may have been exaggerating a little, but, still, considering the fact that the population of Rome at its imperial peak was close to one million inhabitants, that’s a hell of a lot of construction, even though, sadly, very little evidence of Augustus’ building projects still remains. Time, negligence, barbarian invasions, and later-day owners’ and contractors’ unbridled vanity, took their toll. The temple, the palace, the theatre, the insula – it’s all gone, alas. Well, almost.

Emperor Hadrian, one of the “five good ones” and the greatest builder of them all, was an architect by training. Amazing, isn’t it? Moreover, he continued designing and supervising the construction of buildings throughout his reign. He made it is business to oversee many new projects personally, some of them in remote and backwoods regions, such as Northern England, paying close attention (go ahead, prove me wrong) to the design and durability of interior doors. An avid fan of the Greek school, he studded the vast territories, from Egypt to Gaul, and from the Iberian Peninsula to the Rhine, with numerous porticos and domes, all of his own design. Yes: even though most of his projects lie in ruins today, those noble remains speak volumes of the Emperor’s impeccable taste, and those few that are still intact are truly mind-blowing. (Not just the Pantheon, mind you, but all of them. The sheer scale of each project is awe-inspiring. Hadrian’s own villa, some thirty miles northeast of Rome, is really a miniature city, featuring actual streets, squares, plazas, three temples, five theatres, three bathing facilities, and a fully functional aqueduct all its own). (It is quite annoying, I must say, that most of the marble that used to adorn the walls of all those buildings was stripped away by Alexander Borgia’s grandson who was hellbent on building his own villa fifteen centuries after Hadrian’s death. He took most of the statues, too. Not cool. Yes, his villa is an astounding sight, and a tourist magnet, at that. So what).

Needless to say, construction on such a massive scale required a massive number of doors, including interior doors. All things being equal, it is safe to say that most of those featured some form of Cherry Finish, even though, surely, back in antiquity it must have gone by a different name.