Cosma and Damiano

Candelabra cm 4x10 h.15. The research on the plastic treatment of surfaces that characterizes the project for Metallia by architects Susani and Trimarchi is resumed in this object.
The small horizontal cane workmanship embellishes the elegant body of the candelabra. The two slender cylindrical bodies are “tied” to the base with a smooth oval plate.

"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 objects a dark, medieval, Germanic surface: this alloy contains antimony instead: this is how shiny objects are made, 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 forms, 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 already being worked in Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century, by casting a tin alloy into engraved iron or brass moulds, and then 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, with 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 unchanged the peculiar characteristics that distinguish it and the great plastic yield; it is absolutely hygienic and can be used to produce objects to serve at the table and in the kitchen, as well as of course, for all furnishing objects.

The intuition that underlies METALLIA gives new strength to this ancient material, and the shapes, objects and proposals created are the truly remarkable result of the great artistic skills 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 sensibility, particularly attentive to the use of materials in the artisanal and industrial fields, enthusiastically supported the creation of the METALLIA project. The support of Ettore Sottsass , anarchist poet of the architecture of this century and one of the fathers of design, was of fundamental support 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 the knowledge of the craftsman, who knows the material and the techniques to work it, to meet with the poetics of the project, which gives the material a new expressiveness, a feeling of a new ethical and symbolic dimension of making.