Vela

«The Custodia is a small ark that welcomes and protects our dearest things; it is the wrapping with which we ourselves lovingly enfold 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 safeguarded. 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

Wood used: Italian mid-mountain walnut (prov. Italy), worked from solid wood. Blocks assembled and hollowed out by hand.
Walnut from the Piedmont Prealps. Sawn in February 1999, dried for 6 months as a trunk and then stacked on battens for 4 years in a covered but ventilated environment. It then receives a final treatment of one week under vacuum in an autoclave.

Mid-mountain walnut has a particularly beautiful and characteristic grain structure and 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 cared for and protected.

The wood from which Giuseppe Rivadossi’s CUSTODIE are made comes from walnut trees about a hundred years old.
For 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 for this reason they were held in regard, tended and protected.
The wood used for these custodie therefore belongs to a civilisation, the peasant one, which today has irretrievably disappeared.

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

• The trunk used was felled in the appropriate 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 and ventilated place.
• After about 10 years the working can begin: the wood is then roughed out, squared 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 that, while undergoing variations due to the humidity of the environment, will not crack.
• Giuseppe Rivadossi gives the desired shape to the block of wood by hollowing it directly with gouge and chisel, files and sandpaper until the desired form and result are obtained.
• The surface finishing then follows: bleaching of the protruding parts; smoothing of the surfaces with sepia sandpaper; coating with a stain to close the pores of the wood; re-smoothing of the surfaces with ever finer sepia sandpapers; stripping of the coating; treatment with natural beeswax.
• Finish: finished with three coats of wax-based stain.

Working tools:

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