Agate

Plywood box cm18x18x18,5h, limited edition of 99 pieces. Structure in birch plywood covered externally in ebony and maple. Wax finish.

"I wanted to design boxes to be opened by taking care to lift the lid slowly with both hands, as if the box could sense that I am kind to it and that I do not want to mistreat it in the slightest. Boxes made of precious woods where you can put things that are also a little secret: a special brush, some notebooks of special paper 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 assume, when we use them for a very specific reason.

Rosalia , Agnese , Teresa , Zita and Agata are the names of the five wooden boxes proposed 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 assume, when we use them for a very specific reason. Five extraordinary interpretations by Ettore Sottsass of a traditional material like wood, in the strongly iconographic language that distinguishes this great designer.

Material:

• Maple prov. Europe
• Ebony from Indonesia
• Birch from Russia. Birch plywood made of 7 layers of 20/10 mm with cross-grain to make the wood stable.

Processing phases:

1. The process begins with a careful selection of the woods to discard the defective parts and to have a homogeneous effect of color and design of the wood fibers.
2. The birch plywood panel (made up of 7 layers of 20/10 mm, with crossed fibres to make the wood stable) is veneered on both sides, on one side with maple and on the other with alternating bands of ebony and maple. The ebony is applied in a series of 3 layers of 6/10 mm each and the maple in a layer of 20/10 mm. This thickness allows the surfaces to be smoothed and the edges to be rounded.
3. We proceed to cut the parts that make up the box.
4. The various parts are glued and fitted together. The horizontal joints are worked and joined with a rebate; the vertical joints are made with hidden internal wooden cores.
5. After an adequate amount of time, we proceed to treat the surfaces: we work them with cuttlefish paper and round off the edges.
6. The first time you brush on a coat of "primer" to close the pores of the wood.
7. We go over it again to smooth it with increasingly finer cuttlefish paper.
8. We proceed to stamping.
9. Another coat of paint is applied with a brush to make the surface "silky".
10. After adequate drying, a natural layer of beeswax is applied by hand to the internal and external surfaces.

NB: The processing of ebony parts requires great care, because they release, when raw, a black dust that penetrates the fiber of other woods, dirtying them irreparably. All the parts of this box, before being assembled, are left to rest for several months, in order to make the wood more stable.