Teresa

«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

Ettore Sottsass designed Scatole Segrete for Numa, in plywood: 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 this great designer.

Material:

• Zebrano prov. Africa machined parts in solid wood
• Proven ebony Indonesia worked in solid wood
• Birch native Russia. Birch plywood composed of 7 layers of 20/10 mm with crossed fiber to make the wood stable

Processing steps:

1. The processing begins with a careful choice of woods to obtain a homogeneous effect of color and pattern of the wood fibres.
2. We proceed to cut the parts that make up the box.
3. Solid zebrawood edges are fixed on the profiles of the birch plywood facades.
4. We then proceed to slab each part, internally and externally, with a layer of zebrano 20/10 mm thick.
5. We proceed with gluing and fitting together the parts that make up the box. The horizontal joints are machined and joined by tapping, the vertical ones are made with internal wooden cores.
6. The two knobs are built; the ebony is turned from solid wood after a careful choice of the trunk to be worked. The trunks are small and full of defects. There is a waste of approximately 70% to obtain solid blocks suitable for processing.
7. The knobs are left to rest for several months before being further worked on the surfaces and fixed on the lid, to allow further stabilization of the wood.
8. After adequate time, the surfaces of the box are worked with sepia paper and the edges are rounded.
9. We proceed with a first passage by hand, with a brush, of a "primer" to close the pores of the wood.
10. The surfaces are passed over by hand with increasingly finer sepia papers.
11. We proceed with stamping.
12. Another coat of paint is given with a brush, to make the surface "silky".
13. After adequate drying, a layer of natural beeswax is applied by hand.
14. The knobs, which have undergone the same treatment as the surfaces of the box, are fixed to the box using hidden cylindrical wooden pins.

NB. The processing of ebony bars requires great care, as the wood releases a black powder when raw which penetrates the fiber of the other woods, irreparably dirtying them. Ebony must be worked alone and separated from other woods until after it has been painted.