Rosalia

«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
• Ebony from Indonesia, worked in solid wood
• Birch from Russia. Birch plywood made up of 7 layers of 20/10mm with crossed grain to make the wood stable.

Production stages:

1. Production begins with a careful selection of the wood, to obtain a uniform effect of colour and grain pattern.
2. The birch plywood panel is veneered with a layer of maple of 20/10 mm on both faces.
3. The parts that make up the box are cut.
4. The parts are assembled by gluing and fitting them together; the horizontal joints are worked and joined by rebate; the vertical joints are made with internal wooden cores.
5. The lid of the box is made by hand-turning the solid maple.
6. The knob is made by hand-turning the solid ebony, after a careful selection of the trunk. Ebony trunks are small and full of defects. About 70% is discarded to obtain blocks of solid wood suitable for working. The knobs and the maple top of the lid are left to rest for several months to allow the wood to stabilise further
7. After a suitable time the surfaces of the box are worked by hand with sandpaper and the edges are rounded.
8. The body of the box is painted with red aniline pigments.
9. A first coat of “base” is applied by hand to close the pores of the wood.
10. The surfaces are gone over again, by hand, to smooth them with ever finer sandpaper.
11. The stamping is carried out.
12. Another coat of varnish is applied with a brush, to make the surface “silky”.
13. After suitable drying, a layer of natural beeswax is applied by hand.
14. The knob is fixed to the lid of the box by means of a hidden cylindrical wooden dowel.

NB. The working of the ebony parts requires great care, since raw ebony releases a black dust that penetrates the fibre of the other woods, irremediably staining them. Ebony must therefore be worked on its own and kept separate from the other woods.