Alluminio Elivia Horizontal Wood Grain 2VS - Oak - Swing

The two vertical panels (2VS) in this interior door model are like the two Pillars of Hercules, celebrated in numerous Greek and Roman tales as a symbol of strength. In ancient mythology, the Strait of Gibraltar – linking the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean – was created by Zeus’s son when he encountered a mountain he wished neither to climb over nor circumvent. Some versions have him asking the locals whether they had any particular use for the mountain before smashing through it. Some of the locals may or may not have asked for compensation. Other versions have Hercules widen a pre-existing straight, while in others he proceeds to narrow it instead. Be that as it may, the two promontories on either side of the waterway have borne his name ever since.

The powerful image inspired numerous designs – the long list includes (to give you an idea of the symbol’s versatility) the coat of arms of Spain, and to this day you can observe the two columns, originally the impressa of Charles I, on the wall of Seville’s city hall.

Horizontal denotes the direction of the wood grain – or its longitudinal orientation, to use a professional term: no more and no less. This is important, as it will create additional visual space for you, making the room appear wider. A vertically oriented wood grain would give additional visual height to your ceiling – if that’s the effect you prefer, you might want to look into the appropriate interior door model type in this collection.

Visual architectural devices – or tricks, to use a layman’s term – have been around for thousands of years, literally. The Greeks called them “optical correction,” somewhat humorously, one would think. Next time you visit Greece, you might as well take a closer look – at the temple, the theatre, and the palace, or what’s left of them, anyway – and you’ll be delighted to discover that the trick is as ubiquitous as it is effective. You might want to go straight to the source and look at the Parthenon first. It’s amazing: no column is as wide at the top as it is at the bottom; most of the columns are tilted inward; the bottom of the facade slopes down from the middle on both sides. Here’s why: if you position yourself at, say, a hundred yards from the entrance, everything in that building will suddenly come off as perfectly level, even, and symmetrical. Pretty neat, eh?

Of course this interior door comes with all the usual wonderful Almese features, such as the state-of-the-art hardware (including the Italian-made 3D-adjustable self-lubricating concealed hinges, soundless magnetic lock, and automatic sweep), excellent sound-proofing and thermal insulation qualities, warp resistance, and so forth. As for the finish (pick your color!), it is applied using a process known colloquially as “stretching.” It works on molecular level (yes!): rather than laid on, the finish is fused with the door’s surface. This makes the resulting product – this interior door – scratch-resistant and fade-proof. The technology was made available only recently – through a series of technological breakthroughs.

This bold interior door finish – the color more than the grain – is reminiscent of the color of the clipper: the swiftest sail ship ever constructed. Built for speed at the expense of the carrying capacity, those ships traversed both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans from, roughly, the time of the American Revolution and up to the second half of the Nineteenth Century, when they began to be phased out gradually by steamships (some of which actually specialized in passenger travel, featuring actual cabins with actual interior doors), and finally fell into disuse after the opening of the Suez Canal.

(By the way. Lauded as one of our civilization’s grand achievements, the Canal, connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea, is arguably the longest industrial project in history to date. Ancient Egyptian engineers submitted design after design to the Pharaohs, who stubbornly rejected them, shutting the interior door of the palace’s great hall in their faces, even though such a canal would greatly benefit their proto-empire. Greeks talked about the possibility of constructing something navigable in that area for centuries, as Greeks do. The Romans conducted a few dozen feasibility studies – again, over the centuries – but were, somehow, distracted by other important matters every time, such as, to pick a matter at random, selecting the right type of interior doors for a politically adroit senator’s new palace. Finally, fifteen centuries later, give or take, a group of French industrialists saw the project through, and congratulated themselves by commissioning and staging, in Cairo, an opera on Egyptian themes (titled Aida) by Guiseppe Verdi, an Italian composer. Remember this next time you visit it. It’s quite a sight).

Anyway …

A clipper could cross over from Boston to Liverpool in less than two weeks, an unprecedented feat in those days. Apart from the cargo, two or more passenger cabins (featuring interior doors) would be made available to those passengers who did not mind being tossed and thrown off their hammocks and against walls when the outside conditions got serious – or were truly in a hurry.

Previously, sailing a hundred and fifty miles a day was viewed as a very good day’s run. The best clippers could travel more than four hundred miles a day.

It would typically carry extra sails, such as skysails and moonrakers on the masts and studdingsails on booms extending out from the hull. In inclement weather conditions, when the winds were too powerful and the waves too high, other ships would shorten sail and take it easy for fear of capsizing, while clippers just tore implacably on, heeling so much that their lee rails were in the water. Its masts could reach as high as a twenty-story building.

The journey was hardly ever comfortable, but invariably swift. The White Cloud, a so-called “extreme ship,” set the world’s sailing record for the fastest passage between New York and San Francisco (via Cape Horn, of course: the Panama Canal did not exist yet … what is it with our civilization’s reluctance to build canals whenever needed? … ), completing the journey in 89 days. The record stood for over a century and was only broken in 1989.

A number of clippers were used in the British-American War of 1812. Some of them were lightly armed and ready to confront the ferocious enemy, but most were used to deliver urgent messages.

The term was first applied to topsail schooners developed in the Chesapeake Bay even before the battles of Lexington and Concord. Many of those were used, unfortunately, in the Indian and Chinese opium trade, and were later joined by ones built in Great Britain.

The so called “Great Tea Race” took place in 1866, when four ships, named the Fiery Cross, the Ariel, the Taeping, and the Serica, took off from China, carrying tea to London. The race took more than three months as the ships crossed the South China Sea, barreled undaunted through the Sunda Strait of Indonesia, and on across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope of Africa, and up the Atlantic to the English Channel. The three leaders docked in London within minutes of each other.

This interior door finish is a daring one.