Cadmus

«Pewter is an ancient metal alloy: tin, copper, lead... what is produced with this alloy is immobile, solid, heavy. Contemporary pewter no longer contains the lead that gave the objects a dark, medieval, Germanic surface: this alloy instead contains antimony: thus brilliant objects are created, similar to silver, which however do not lose their immobility and presence".
Ettore Sottsass

METALLIA is contemporary pewter. Rediscovering an 'ancient' material, such as pewter, and giving it new shapes, characterizing it with new surfaces, filling it with new meanings: this is the Metallia project, whose aim is to re-propose pewter objects through the interpretation of different designers , of their modern language, with the fundamental contribution of Alfredo Marinoni 's know-how. Metallia represents the meeting between the craftsman, who knows the material and knows how to work it, and the poetics of the project, which gives new expressiveness to the material.

Pewter is an ancient material , which was worked in Europe as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century, casting a tin alloy into engraved iron or brass shapes, and subsequently working it with the corrosion and hammering technique to obtain traditional artisan shapes. Contemporary pewter, the protagonist of the Metallia collection, is a noble alloy in all respects, it has extraordinary characteristics of ductility and great plastic yield. Contemporary Pewter is made up of a composite set of metals, with the absolute exclusion of lead; it therefore maintains the peculiar characteristics that distinguish it and the great plastic yield unchanged; it is absolutely hygienic and can be used to produce objects to serve at the table and in the kitchen, as well as naturally for all furnishing objects.

The intuition underlying METALLIA gives new strength to this ancient material, and the shapes, objects and proposals created are the truly remarkable result of the great artistic abilities of the Designers that pervade Numa's work. This is also demonstrated by the fact that Tamar Ben David , Liliana Bonomi , Giovanni Levanti , Marco Susani and Mario Trimarchi , designers with a strong artistic sensitivity, particularly attentive to the use of materials in the artisan and industrial fields, enthusiastically joined the realization of the METALLIA project . The adhesion of Ettore Sottsass , an anarchist poet of this century's architecture and one of the fathers of design, was of fundamental comfort to the project.

The result of this work is expressed in a program of 28 objects, to decorate the table and the home, objects of great evocative power, which find a natural place in an environment. The Metallia project is also the precise expression of the philosophy of the Numa brand, aimed at deepening the research and production of objects using materials traditionally used by artisans, but reinterpreted in the light of design.

Metallia therefore represents, in the path undertaken by NUMA, the first opportunity for a meeting between the knowledge of the craftsman, who knows the material and the techniques for working it, and the poetics of the project, which gives the material a new expressiveness, a feeling of a new ethical and symbolic dimension of doing.