Ark Serena

Walnut chest, cm 40 x 23 x 23 h limited edition of 14 pieces. Construction features: composite structure with two openings. Manually finished by hollowing out with a large plane. Finish: whitened on the edges and finished with three coats of wax impregnator.
Material: Iuglans Regia (National Walnut) from mid-mountain. Sawn in January 1994, dried for 6 months in the trunk and then stripped for 9 years in a covered but ventilated environment. Each specimen is signed and numbered. It is accompanied by a certificate of guarantee that attests to its authenticity and edition.

"The Custody is a small ark that welcomes and protects our dearest things, it is the wrapping with which we lovingly wrap 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 protected. We build these small homes with Walnut (Iuglans Regia), a noble and precious wood, which is born and lives in our Prealps. We work the essence following ancient methods and knowledge, a lively 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 sign of our vision of life".
Joseph Rivadossi

Wood used: National walnut from the middle of the mountain (province of Italy), worked from solid wood. Blocks assembled and hollowed out by hand.
Iuglans Regia (National Walnut) from mid-mountain sawn in January 1994, dried for 6 months in the trunk and then stripped for 9 years in a covered but ventilated environment.

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

The wood used to make Giuseppe Rivadossi's CASES is walnut that is approximately a hundred years old.
For the economy of those who lived in the piedmont area, at the beginning of the last century, the walnut was part of the economic production cycle as a precious element of sustenance, they were trees that farmers appreciated for their characteristics of resistance and workability, but no less for the fruit they gave 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):

• The trunk used was felled in the appropriate season of the year, January, and with a waning moon.
• After a few months the trunk was sawn into planks and immediately reassembled and left to rest for about 6 months. During this period the trunk "ferments" by evening out the color and calming the internal tensions in the wood fiber itself.
• The wood was then debarked and dried in a dry, ventilated place.
• After about 10 years, the work can begin: the wood is then roughed out, prismed and reconstituted in a block with special glues so that it can be dug and sculpted. These cutting and recompacting operations are necessary to have wood that, even if it undergoes variations due to the humidity of the environments, will not crack.
• Giuseppe Rivadossi gives the desired shape to the block of wood by carving it directly with a gouge and chisel, files and sandpaper until he obtains the desired shape and result.
• We then proceed to the finishing of the surfaces: whitening of the emerging parts; sanding of the surfaces with cuttlefish paper; varnishing with an impregnating agent to close the pores of the wood; re-sanding of the surfaces with increasingly fine cuttlefish paper; stripping; treatment with natural beeswax.

Processing tools:

• For cutting the tree: band saw.
• For sawing the log: band saw, circular saw, planer, thicknesser.
• For excavation: specially made cutting steel gouge and chisel.