Bretone

“The Custodia is a small ark that welcomes and protects our dearest things, it is the wrapping with which we ourselves lovingly envelop 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 cherished. We build these small dwellings with 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 sensitivity and great manual skill are at the base 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: Italian walnut from mid-altitude mountain areas (prov. Italy), worked from solid wood. Blocks assembled and hollowed out by hand.
Iuglans Regia (Italian Walnut) from mid-altitude mountain areas, sawn in January 1994, dried for 6 months as a trunk and then stickered for 9 years in a covered but ventilated environment.

Mid-altitude 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, because 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 from which the CUSTODIE of Giuseppe Rivadossi are made comes from walnut trees that are about a hundred years old.
For the economy of those who lived in the foothills, 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 characteristics of resistance 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 has today irretrievably disappeared.

Stages of production (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 and ventilated place.
• After about 10 years the working can begin: the wood is then roughed out, squared and recomposed 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, even though it undergoes variations due to the humidity of the environments, will not crack.
• Giuseppe Rivadossi gives the desired shape to the block of wood by hollowing it out 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; smoothing of the surfaces with sepia paper; application of an impregnating agent to close the pores of the wood; re-smoothing of the surfaces with ever finer sepia papers; de-varnishing; treatment with natural beeswax.
• Finish: finished with a wax-based impregnating agent and de-varnished

Tools used:

• For cutting the tree: band saw.
• For sawing the trunk: band saw, circular saw, jointer, thicknesser.
• For hollowing out: specially made cutting-steel gouge and chisel.