Zita

«I wanted to design boxes to be opened with care, lifting the lid slowly with both hands, as if the box could sense that I am being gentle with it and that I have no wish whatsoever to mistreat it. Boxes made of precious woods in which to put things that are even a little secret: a special brush, a few small notebooks of special paper, or more simply something I would like to remain secret. Perhaps love notes».
Ettore Sottsass

Ettore Sottsass designed for Numa Scatole Segrete, in plywood: five small architectures that express a very personal vision of the value of things: that symbolic value which certain objects charged with meaning can take on when we use them for a very specific reason. 

Rosalia, Agnese, Teresa, Zita and Agata are the names of the five wooden boxes offered in 99 numbered pieces. Five small architectures that express a very personal vision of the value of things: that symbolic value which certain objects charged with meaning can take on when we use them for a very specific reason. Five extraordinary interpretations by Ettore Sottsass of a traditional material such as wood, in the strongly iconographic language that distinguishes this great designer. 

Materials:

• Maple from Europe, worked in solid wood 

Production stages: 

1. Production of the box begins with a careful selection of the solid maple wood, to obtain a uniform effect of colour and grain pattern.
2. The solid maple is then hollowed out by hand according to the design. 
3. Once the various faces and the bottom part have been obtained, the parts are glued and fitted together; the horizontal parts are worked and joined by rebate; the vertical joints are made with internal wooden cores. 
4. The lid of the box is hollowed out from the solid wood to create the closing rebate; the protruding slats are fixed one by one to the lid by means of hidden internal wooden cores.
5. After a suitable time the surfaces are worked by hand with sandpaper and the edges are rounded. 
6. The box is coloured by hand with yellow aniline pigments.
7. A first coat of a “base” is then applied by hand, with a brush, to close the pores of the wood. 
8. The surfaces are gone over again, by hand, to smooth them with ever finer sandpaper.
9. The stamping is carried out.
10. Another coat of varnish is applied with a brush, to make the surfaces “silky”. 
11. After suitable drying, a layer of natural beeswax is applied by hand.

NB. All the parts of this box, before being assembled, are left to rest for several months, so as to make the wood more stable.