Alluminio Elivia Horizontal Wood Grain 2VS - Rose Beech - 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.

When selecting just the right finish for your interior doors, bear in mind that associations, i.e. images and concepts it will evoke day after day, are highly important in many ways: aesthetic, psychological, technical, and so forth. Yes: after all, they’re not just any interior doors: they’re your interior doors.

Rose, as a color, is named after the most romantic of all perennial flowering plants native to Asia, with smaller numbers once found in Europe, North America, and northwestern Africa. In ancient Greece, it was closely associated with the goddess Aphrodite. French Impressionists Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne and Pierre-Aguste Renoir painted roses often and with gusto.

It is a bit of a delicious mystery why this flower’s most common color has been so popular since time immemorial – a mystery seemingly impossible to solve. Why, why? Is it because it’s gentle, youthful, full of hope, full of promise? Who knows. It should never be confused with pink. Not when it comes to interior doors, anyway.

You’ll recall that in the moderately well-known William Shakespeare play titled Romeo and Juliet, the heroine, flinging open the balcony door and stepping out, poses a rhetorical question to herself and promptly answers it while looking at the starry sky: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose … by any other word would smell as sweet.” Poetic license, you might say, and anyway, what does she know, she’s only thirteen or fourteen.

In heraldry, rosa is often used both as a charge on a coat of arms and by itself as an heraldic badge, with five symmetrical lobes, five barbs, and a circular seed.

It was at one point the symbol of the English Tudor dynasty, and the ten-petaled Tudor one, found on some interior doors over in “the old country” is associated with merry old England.

… The beech is, of course, a deciduous tree, native to the temperate regions of Europe, Asia, and North America. While the European variety being the one most commonly cultivated, the American version, native to the East Coast (New England and up) and southeast Canada, are more important in this context. You’ll soon see why.

The popularity of the beech as timber increased a thousandfold several centuries ago when folks discovered it became extremely flexible when steamed. The Thonet Brothers became quite famous as masterful Viennese manufacturers of bentwood furniture (but not interior doors: today’s finishing technique, the one we at Almes Doors apply, had not yet been invented).

That said, folks who use beech timber as a matter of course are musical instrument makers.

Here’s why:

Tonewood – timber used by the music industry – consists of two categories. While softwoods (from coniferous trees) are favored for the soundboards that transmit the vibrations of the strings to the ambient air, hardwoods (of which the North American beech is one) are favored for the body or framing element of an instrument.

Guitars come to mind – or any other string instrument, for that matter, since all of them have curves, but, more to the point, the grand piano is absolutely on that list, since, once all the bending and curving is done, the resulting frame of the modern piano is amazingly sturdy.

Sturdy. Stable. Reliable. Dependable. Friendly.