Alluminio Elivia Horizontal Wood Grain 4HS - Cherry - 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.

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.