Agnes

«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:

• Local maple Europa worked in solid wood
• Proven rosewood Madagascar
• 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 process begins with a careful choice of wood, which becomes laborious especially for rosewood as the grain pattern must have a certain continuity on the various faces of the object.
2. The birch plywood panel is veneered with 3 layers of rosewood with a thickness of 6/10mm. each.
3. We proceed to cut the parts that make up the box.
4. We continue with the gluing and interlocking of the parts; the horizontal joints are machined and joined by tapping, the vertical joints are made with internal wooden cores. Extreme attention is required in the assembly of the facades which must have continuity of the wood grain design.
5. The base and the knob are cut from solid maple and left to rest for a few months to further stabilize the wood.
6. They are hand painted with blue aniline pigments.
7. After adequate time, the surfaces are treated: they are rubbed with sepia paper and the edges are rounded.
8. We proceed with a first pass by hand with a brush, of a "primer" to close the pores of the wood.
9. The surfaces are smoothed again by hand with increasingly finer sepia papers.
10. We proceed with stamping.
11. Another coat of paint is given with a brush, to make the surface "silky".
12. After adequate drying, a layer of natural beeswax is applied by hand.
13. The knob and base are fixed using hidden cylindrical wooden pins.

NB- The processing of colored parts poses particular handling problems, as the aniline pigment color is particularly invasive. The processing of the colored parts therefore takes place at different times and spaces compared to the rest of the production.