Collection: Cases

Giuseppe Rivadossi , a highly expressive wood artist, designed the Custodie collection for Numa.

«The Custody is a small ark that welcomes and protects our dearest things, it is the wrapping with which we ourselves lovingly wrap the objects, the signs of our affections, it is a small gesture in which we recognize our relationship with Creation . The Custody is the home of our memory, it is a sign of love and a sign of how we ourselves feel loved and cared for. We build these small homes with walnut (Iuglans Regia), a noble and precious wood, which originates and lives in our Pre-Alps. We work the essence following ancient methods and knowledge, a keen sensitivity and great manual skill are the basis of the constructive honesty that guides us. Even in these small containers we want to leave the mark of our vision of life." Giuseppe Rivadossi

The meeting with Giuseppe Rivadossi , a great master in woodworking , one of the most sensitive artists , led to the creation of the NUMA Cases collection. Real wooden sculptures worked according to ancient methods and knowledge, respecting the flow of the fibres, the hidden veins and the peculiar characteristics of an essence, the national walnut (Iuglans Regia) which Rivadossi knows very well. Arca Serena , Bretone , Carolingia , Dolmen and Vela are five caskets with strong chiaroscuro, handcrafted with the excavation technique, which Numa offers in a numbered edition of 14 pieces.

«I have known Giuseppe Rivadossi for more than thirty years but even now, every time I meet him, I relive the happy amazement that comes over you when you are in front of a true man and artist.
Giuseppe's eyes amaze me when, scrutinizing beautiful but still mysterious pieces of wood for me, they show that they already know their future. When they read apparent harshness, hidden veins, complicit shadows, jagged or tragic or silent reliefs. I am amazed by his hands that caress the material as only an alchemist, or a magician or "simply" an artist is given the privilege of doing.
He is a man who has the rare gift of going straight to the truth of things.
My thanks go to him for sharing the meaning of the NUMA project and for having elevated its value through his work." Roberto Zani 

The wood used: National mid-mountain walnut (from Italy), worked from solid wood. Blocks assembled and dug by hand.

The mid-mountain walnut has a particularly beautiful and characteristic structure and color of the fiber. It is also stronger and more resistant than lowland walnut. The Italian walnut is a rare wood, since it is a very sensitive solitary tree, which does not grow in the jungle, but only in areas where it can be cared for and protected.

The wood with which Giuseppe Rivadossi's CASES are made are walnuts that are about a hundred years old. For the economy of those who lived in the foothill area, at the beginning of the last century, the walnut was part of the productive economic cycle as a precious element of sustenance, they were trees that farmers appreciated for their characteristics of resistance and workability, but not less for the fruit they bore and therefore they were taken into consideration, cared for and protected.

The wood used for these cases therefore belongs to a civilization, the peasant one, which today has irremediably disappeared.

Processing phases (each step is carried out entirely by hand):

1. The log used was felled in the appropriate season of the year, January and with a waning moon.
   
2. After a few months the trunk was sawn into planks and immediately recomposed and left to rest for about 6 months. During this period the trunk "ferments" uniforming the color and calming the internal tensions of the wood fiber itself.
   
3. The wood was then debarked and dried in a dry and ventilated place.
   
4. After approximately 10 years, work can begin: the wood is then roughed up, prismatic and reconstituted as a block with special glues to be able to be carved and sculpted. These cutting and compacting operations are necessary to have wood that, despite undergoing variations due to the humidity of the environment, will not crack.
   
5. Giuseppe Rivadossi gives the desired shape to the block of wood by digging it directly with a gouge and chisel, file and sandpaper until the desired shape and result is obtained.
   
6. We then proceed with the finishing of the surfaces: whitening of the emerging parts; smoothing the surfaces with sepia paper; painting with an impregnating agent to close the pores of the wood; smoothing of the surfaces with increasingly fine cuttlefish papers; paint stripping; natural beeswax treatment.

Crafting Tools:

• for cutting the tree: band saw.
  
• for sawing the trunk: band saw, circular saw, surface planer, thickness planer.
  
• for excavation: specially made steel cutting gouge and chisel.
  

Numa, Nuovi Materiali Antichi , is the project, led by Roberto Zani, who for some years has been working on the reinterpretation of traditional materials through contemporary expressive languages, producing small series and limited edition design objects. The history of Numa begins in 1999 with Metallia, a collection of pewter objects by multiple authors and continues in 2001 with the first limited edition: Just for Flowers, six pewter vases designed by Ettore Sottsass.

In the following years, the Numa project extended its research to other traditional materials, excavated wood and Murano glass. The result is three new limited edition collections: Custodie by Giuseppe Rivadossi, from 2003; Secret Tables and Boxes, by Ettore Sottsass, 2004.

In 2006 the Numa project embarked on a new research path, the result of its encounter with poetry, architecture and philosophy. Together with the creation in pewter of an extraordinary collection of vases designed by Mario Botta, it offers two illustrious exponents of Italian culture, the poet Mario Luzi and the philosopher Remo Bodei, two themes of literary reflection.