Teresa

Plywood box cm 15x15x23,5h, limited edition of 99 pieces. Structure in birch plywood covered with three layers of zebrano. Knob and base in solid black ebony. 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:

• Zebrano prov. Africa solid machined parts
• Ebony from Indonesia worked in solid wood
• Birch from Russia. Birch plywood composed 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 woods to obtain a homogeneous effect of color and design of the wood fibers.
2. We proceed to cut the parts that make up the box.
3. Solid zebrano edges are fixed to the birch plywood facade profiles.
4. We then proceed to veneer each part, internally and externally, with a layer of zebrano 20/10 mm thick.
5. The parts that make up the box are glued and fitted together. The horizontal joints are worked and joined by rebates, the vertical ones are made with internal wooden cores.
6. The two knobs are made; the ebony is turned from solid wood after a careful selection of the trunk to be worked. The trunks are small and full of defects. There is a waste of about 70% to obtain solid blocks suitable for working.
7. The knobs are left to rest for several months before being further worked on the surfaces and fixed to the lid, to allow further stabilization of the wood.
8. After an adequate amount of time, the surfaces of the box are worked with cuttlefish paper and the edges are rounded.
9. We proceed with a first pass by hand, with a brush, of a "primer" to close the pores of the wood.
10. The surfaces are then manually re-examined with increasingly finer sepia paper.
11. We proceed to stamping.
12. Apply another coat of paint with a brush to make the surface "silky".
13. After adequate drying, a layer of natural beeswax is applied by hand.
14. The knobs, which have undergone the same treatment as the box surfaces, are fixed to the box itself using hidden interlocking cylindrical wooden pins.

NB. The processing of ebony barti requires great care, as the wood releases a black dust when raw that penetrates the fiber of other woods, dirtying them irreparably. Ebony must be worked alone and separated from other woods until after it has been varnished.