Dolmen

«The Custodia is a small ark that welcomes and protects our dearest things, it is the wrapping with which we ourselves lovingly wrap objects, the signs of our affections, it is a small gesture in which we recognise our relationship with Creation. The Custodia is the home of our memory, it is a sign of love and a sign of how we ourselves feel loved and cared for. We build these small dwellings from Walnut (Iuglans Regia), a noble and precious wood, which is born and lives in our Prealps. We work the wood following very ancient methods and knowledge; a lively sensibility and great manual skill are the basis of the constructive honesty that guides us. Even in these small containers we want to leave the mark of our vision of life».
Giuseppe Rivadossi

The wood used: national mid-mountain walnut (from Italy), worked from solid. Blocks assembled and hollowed by hand.
Iuglans Regia (National Walnut) from the mid-mountain zone, sawn in January 1994, dried for 6 months as a trunk and then stacked on stickers for 9 years in a covered but ventilated environment.

Mid-mountain walnut has a particularly beautiful and characteristic structure and fibre colour. It is also stronger and more resistant than lowland walnut. Italian walnut is a rare wood, since it is a very sensitive solitary tree, which does not grow in the forest, but only in areas where it can be tended and protected.

The wood with which the CUSTODIE of Giuseppe Rivadossi are made comes from walnut trees that are about a hundred years old.
In the economy of those who lived in the foothill area, at the beginning of the last century, the walnut was part of the productive economic cycle as a precious element of sustenance; these were trees that the farmers appreciated for their qualities of strength and workability, but no less for the fruit they gave, and therefore they were held in regard, tended and protected.
The wood used for these caskets therefore belongs to a civilisation, the peasant one, that has now irremediably disappeared.

Production stages (every step is carried out entirely by hand):

• The trunk used was felled in the suitable season of the year, January, and with a waning moon.
• After a few months the trunk was sawn into boards and immediately reassembled and left to rest for about 6 months. During this period the trunk “ferments”, evening out the colour and calming the internal tensions of the wood fibre itself.
• The wood was then debarked and dried in a dry, ventilated place .
• After about 10 years the work can begin: the wood is then roughed out, cut into prisms and reconstituted into a block with special glues so that it can be hollowed out and carved. These cutting and recompacting operations are necessary to obtain wood which, while undergoing variations due to the humidity of the environment, will not crack.
• Giuseppe Rivadossi gives the block of wood the desired shape by hollowing it directly with gouge and chisel, files and sandpaper until the desired form and result are obtained.
• The finishing of the surfaces then follows: bleaching of the protruding parts; sanding of the surfaces with sepia paper; coating with an impregnating stain to close the pores of the wood; re-sanding of the surfaces with ever finer sepia papers; stripping of the varnish; treatment with natural beeswax.
• Finish: finished with wax impregnating stain and stripped of varnish.

Working tools:

• For cutting the tree: band saw.
• For sawing the trunk: band saw, circular saw, jointer, thickness planer.
• For hollowing: gouge and chisel in cutting steel made specially for the purpose.