Small Square Table
Tavole are six large limited edition centrepieces, in pewter or pewter and blown glass "designed to give meaning to the table and make it more magical and ritual". Extraordinary interpretations by Ettore Sottsass of traditional materials, in the highly iconographic language that distinguishes the great master.
Ettore Sottsass's design path takes us, in 2004, to the encounter between the lightness and color of Murano glass with the strong architectural construction of the pewter parts. The transparency of the glass does not hide the structure of the metal, it discreetly contains and protects the good fruits and offers them to our desire as a precious commodity. NUMA's fourth collection is made up of six pieces, six centerpieces that tell us about the joy and pleasure of thinking of objects that will accompany us in our daily gestures and rituals, becoming a happy part of our everyday life.
«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
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 Numa collections, 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.
Material:
Pewter is an alloy composed of tin and small quantities of antimony and copper. Due to its ductility it has been used by man since ancient times to create commonly used objects. In the centuries closest to us, a percentage of lead was added to tin, which was soon banned due to its toxicity. The pewter used to make Numa objects is an alloy composed of 95% tin, and the absolute absence of lead makes it fully compliant with the EN-611/1 regulation of the EEC.
Processing steps:
- The first operation relating to the production cycle is the purchase of the raw material in blocks or sheets of pewter ready to be melted, or the purchase of blocks or sheets of tin, wires or bars of copper and antimony, which, melted in the special melting furnace at a temperature of 250-300° C, give the pewter
- The molten metal is poured manually using a ladle into the rubber molds. These molds are mounted on centrifuges: machines that rotate the mold during the casting and drying phase of the alloy.
- After the drying phase, the operator extracts the product, which is subsequently deburred with scissors and sanded.
- For the pieces that require it, manual assembly follows through soldering
- The pieces are then manually inserted into the vibrators, where they remain for approximately 2 hours. The vibration smoothes the surface of the object using water and ceramic inserts (inert material).
- Upon exiting the vibrators, the pieces are checked and possibly straightened using rubber hammers. After this phase we move on to the final phase of hand polishing using brushes.
- Each single piece is finally stamped with the designer's signature, the Numa logo and its numbering.
NB All processing phases are carried out by highly specialized workers at the atelier of the master pewter Alfredo Marinoni, Cellatica (BS).
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