Collection: Secret Boxes

Ettore Sottsass designed Scatole Segrete for Numa, in multi-layer wood: five small architectures that express a very personal vision of the value of things: that symbolic value that certain objects full of meaning can take on when we use them for a very specific reason.

Rosalia , Agnese , Teresa , Zita and Agata are the names of the five wooden boxes offered in 99 numbered copies. Five small architectures that express a very personal vision of the value of things: that symbolic value that certain objects full of meaning can take on when we use them for a very specific reason.

Five extraordinary interpretations by Ettore Sottsass of a traditional material such as wood, in the highly iconographic language that distinguishes the great designer.

«I wanted to design boxes to open, taking care to lift the lid slowly with two hands, as if the box could feel that I am kind to it and that I don't want to mistreat it in the slightest. Boxes made with precious woods where you can put even slightly secret things: a special brush, some special paper notebooks or more simply something that I would like to remain secret. Maybe notes from lovers." Ettore Sottsass

Limited edition of 99 pieces. Each piece is numbered, signed and sold with a certificate of guarantee.

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 story 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 Thirteen 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.