Materials

We choose our materials among the rich variety of traditional Tuscan raw materials and finishes. The leathers we use are from Pisa, the different types of wood from Pistoia, the metals from Elba. Following the example of Prato, famous for its textiles and its historical ties to China, the mother of pearl in our inlaid furniture and the bamboo in our outdoor collection are imported. The nearby town of Lastra a Signa offers its mastery in straw craft with its bags, hats and dresses. And how could we forget Carrara with its quarries of White grey-veined marble and the even more prestigious pink Calacatta and Breccia marbles. All along the Italian coast you can find beautiful rocks such as Slate, Roman Travertine and volcanic Onyx. The immense variety, the creativity and the resourcefulness that Tuscany offers and that you can also find in its rich culinary tradition, bring about ever-evolving creations and original combinations of raw materials. It is this same inspiring tradition that encourages us to continually be in search of new “forgotten” materials.

Parchment

Parchment is a membrane obtained from goatskin. It was used until the 14th century as a writing medium until it was gradually replaced by paper made of hemp or other textile fibres. Today it is still used as a furniture veneer. In interior design, it was very popular during the French Art Deco period and particularly so in works by J. M. Franck, Osvaldo Borsani or in Alessandro Mendini’s unique decorated pieces.

Parchment

Maple

A fine wood from the woods of the Apennine mountains. It is characterized by its highly visible grain with compact light-coloured fibres that range between creamy-white and rosy-yellow and which do not fade in time. It has always found use in refined carpentry and cabinetry. Today it is sought after for modern interiors for its bright and fresh effect due to its light colour.

Maple

White poplar

A species found in Southern-Central Europe and also called “gattice” or simply “albera” by Tuscan carpenters. It is a light wood that is used to produce cellulose, plywood and common furniture.
Thanks to its porosity it is particularly apt to acquire any chosen colour tone and for this reason it was used in Italy to “fake” precious woods such as walnut, for example in furniture interiors. We use it in all its simplicity, in its opaque version.

White poplar

Cypress

So sturdy, so incorruptible, so reliable that the Lord himself ordered Noah in Genesis: “Make for yourself an ark of cypress wood”. The olive tree had the honour of announcing the retreat of the waters and the return of life on land; but the mission of saving that life was given to the cypress only. No other wood was considered worthy enough to succeed in such a difficult task. “Instead of the thorn bush the cypress will come up” announced the prophets.
It is indicated for outdoor fixtures, for naval construction, for carpentry work and for pieces of furniture meant to preserve clothing and dowry textiles for long periods of time due to its ability to keep insects and parasites away.

Cypress

Olive tree

Eastern and European peoples have always considered the olive tree a symbol of peace. In Ancient Greece, it was a sacred tree. In Ancient Rome, not only was it a distinguished symbol for illustrious men but, according to tradition, it also sheltered Romulus and Remus at birth. For the Hebrews, the olive tree was a symbol of justice and knowledge. In the First Book of Kings, Solomon, while building the first Temple of Jerusalem, “… made doors of olive wood at the entrance to the inner sanctuary; on the two doors made of olive wood he carved cherubim, palm trees, and flowers in bloom… In the same way he made doorposts of olive wood for the entrance to the main hall.” (1 Kings 6, 31-33). In Christianity the olive tree has various symbolisms. In the Bible it is said that, when the Floodwaters had calmed, a dove brought Noah an olive branch to announce that the earth and sky were once again at peace. From that moment the olive tree acquired double significance: it became a symbol of rebirth because, after the destruction caused by the Flood, the earth could bloom once again; it also became a symbol of peace because it marked the end of God’s punishment and the reconciliation of God with humankind.

Olive tree

Pear

One of the most widespread fruit trees in the world. There is a preference for the wood of the wild variety, the fruit of which is generally inedible. This tree comes from the Mediterranean and was known since the Bronze Age. It was largely used in furniture manufacturing until the 1950s and 1960s.
It is characterized by the almost total absence of irregularities, its negligible concentration of knots and the colour of the heartwood that ranges between dark and reddish brown. The wild variety of pear wood is, together with maple, the wood preferred by luthiers to craft recorders.

Pear

Light Italian walnut

Has a beautiful grain that includes all shades of brown and becomes even more beautiful with ageing. Because of these characteristics, national walnut is extensively used for refined furniture and cabinetry. To get an idea of how expensive walnut wood is, it is twice the price of cherry, chestnut and pear wood, triple the price of maple wood and four times that of birch wood.

Light Italian walnut

Dark Italian walnut

We also offer shellac effect semi-lucid dark national walnut that presents the same characteristics of light national walnut.
Shellac is a natural resin secreted by the Kerria lacca, an insect found in forests in Assam and Thailand. It has been used since the 1700s to polish furniture. Shellac polish is not applied with a brush but with a cotton wad with wool filling.
Today, wood is coated with high quality varnishes which manage to obtain the same result as shellac in less time, giving the wood a very solid, material quality, protecting it and allowing the chromatic differences that make each wood unique to remain visible.

Dark Italian walnut

Cathedral walnut

The feather indicates a high class portion of solid wood. It is characterized by an elegant natural pattern of feather-like stains; it is the most valuable part of the tree and is obtained by cutting the trunk longitudinally where it forks into two separate branches.

Cathedral walnut

Italian walnut root wood

Walnut root wood is a high class wood extracted from the root of the walnut tree of which it keeps the characteristic circular knot.

Italian walnut root wood

Myrtus root wood

Myrtus grows in the entire Mediterranean as far as the Middle East. It is mostly cultivated in parks and gardens. The tree has modest dimensions and often remains in its shrub form in the Mediterranean maquis.

Myrtus root wood

Birch root wood

Birch is found in the Balkans, the Alps and the whole of Europe and Asia. In Italy it is particularly present in Piedmont and Lombardy; the Northern Apennines, a few isolated stations in Abruzzo, the Apennines of Campania and the Etna. This tree is of particular ornamental value thanks to its elegant foliage and is also used by herbalists due to its important phytotherapeuthic properties.
Biedermeier’s spartan and strict style was dominated by birch root wood; Art Deco adopted it as an ingredient in its sculptures and in the 1950s it was used as a frivolous element of rational design, for example in armchair arm rests.

Birch root wood

Poplar root wood

Is very decorative. It was prized in the 1930s when it was used for “modern” furniture. It is extracted from the poplar’s base but also from its entire trunk through veneer peeling. Poplars are intensively cultivated in the Po Valley. The root wood’s characteristic pattern is due to the contrast of the white of the wood with the yellowish-brown of the parts that are more deeply rooted.

Poplar root wood

European cherry

Has a bright finish when treated with beeswax or shellac. It is generally polished au naturel to enhance its beautiful grain. Its colours range between dark golden-brown and red.

European cherry

Ebony

This term has been used throughout history to indicate extremely high class very dark or black wood that came from diverse regions, such as Africa, Asia or America. It is a very rare and expensive imported wood. It became fashionable in Europe in the Baroque era and particularly at the court of King Louis XIV. The Italian term “ebanista” (Eng. cabinet-maker) derives from the word “ebony”; an “ebanista” is the artisan who crafts furniture and objects from this precious wood. The taste for black coloured furniture re-emerged in the second half of the 19th century with Eclecticism. Very few pieces of furniture are made with ebony today, it is preferable to use national woods and paint them black, obtaining what is referred to as ebonized wood.

Ebony

Aged brass

Manually satinized and burnished with acid converters, refined through fixing and wax polished with cloth.

Aged brass

Bamboo with honey finish

In modern interior design, bamboo was mostly used by the famous designer Gabriella Crespi in the 1970s. This material has many similarities with common cane (Arundo donax) that can be found from the Mediterranean to the Middle East and as far as India. Bamboo is originally found in Asia and America. It is specially indicated for carpentry due to its hardness.

Bamboo with honey finish

Bamboo with slight finish

Many Asian cultures, including that of the Andaman Islands believe that humanity descends from a bamboo stem. According to the Philippine myth of creation, the first man and woman to inhabit the planet came from a bamboo shoot that emerged on an island created after a war between the elemental forces of Ocean and Sky. In Malaysian mythology, a similar story includes a man who dreams of a beautiful woman while sleeping under a bamboo plant; he wakes up, breaks off a stem and finds the woman inside it. In Japan, Shinto monasteries are often surrounded by bamboo forests that are believed to create a sacred barrier against evil.

Bamboo with slight finish

Bamboo with black finish

We use Armenian bole, a red clay that is used for gold leaf gilding, as a base. You can still glimpse the Armenian bole in black finish just as you would in gold leaf finish, this creates a reddish effect depending on the intensity of the light.

Bamboo with black finish

Rattan

In botany, the term rattan includes various climbing palm species. Their wood is used to make sofas, furniture, walking sticks, fishing rods, umbrellas and in weaving crafts.

Rattan

Rush

Basket weaving was an ancient Italian trade, born to cater for daily needs: rush was used to make baskets for olive harvesting or cheeses, or to make fish traps.
It is a bushy aquatic perennial plant and is found in maritime areas of all continents.

Rush

Coir light finish

The coconut tree is a resource for many tropical countries; it is used for its produce, that is consumed fresh or transformed and from which the fibre, coir, is extracted. Coir is used for weaving, carpets, ropes. The wood of the coconut palm tree is also used as construction material and the leaves as fibres to weave into hats, mats and hut roofing.

Coir light finish

Coir dark finish

We also offer coir closed in black-stained finish. The coconut coir fibres are found between the coconut’s outer coat and its shell. The single cells of the fibre are narrow and empty, with fine cell walls made of cellulose. Coir is rather resistant to water and is one of the few natural fibres able to resist salt-water damage. We use Armenian bole, a red clay that is used for gold leaf gilding, as a base. You can still glimpse the bole in black finishes just as in gold leaf finishes, this creates a reddish effect depending on the intensity of the light.

Coir dark finish

Oak

Oak wood (Quercus petrae) is a rather fine wood and is used not only in furniture manufacturing but also in construction, for trusses, wood flooring, naval construction, and for the staves of barrels used for ageing wine and other alcoholic beverages.

Oak

Oak with barrique finish

We offer oak with barrique finish, suggested for country house interiors and particularly for wine cellars.

Oak with barrique finish

Decapé oak

In interior design, distressing is a finishing technique that aims to achieve an ageing effect which allows the grain of the wood or the colour of the underlying paint to show. Distressing is an ancient decorative technique that dates back to the France of the first half of the 18th century. Some schools of thought say that it was not born as a true figurative-carpentry technique, but it was rather derived from a failed preserving treatment. In other words: a side effect of a treatment for woodworm.

Decapé oak

Red decapé oak

Distressed finishes were used with many nuances by famous interior designers, such as Alberto Pinto in his refined boiseries and wall wood panelling.

Red decapé oak

Dark decapé oak

Ebanized wood distressed with an ivory coloured paste.

Dark decapé oak

Gold leaf

Gilding a surface by covering it with gold is a very ancient technique and it is an almost magical procedure… Gilding was born and developed based on the idea that coating an object with an unalterable metal such as gold meant that the object itself would be preserved and become eternal. Gold leaf gilding can be carried out with different techniques such as oil gilding or water gilding. These ancient techniques were, for centuries, a jealously guarded secret only known to gilding masters and their workshops. We use Armenian bole, a red clay, as a base.

Gold leaf

Gold mother of pearl

Mother of pearl is a precious, iridescent, pearl-white material extracted from the internal layer of certain mollusc shells. In art, notably during the Renaissance and still to date, it is used to create inlay patterns in furniture decoration.

Gold mother of pearl

White mother of pearl

Mother of pearl is known internationally by the name “Nacre”, deriving from the Arab word “naqqarah” which means seashell or shell. The name “Mother of pearl” was given by Queen Elizabeth I in the 16th century. Mother of pearl was already in use from the year 3000 BC to embellish jewellery and other objects. The name also alludes to the fact that the shells are in some way the “mothers” of pearls.

White mother of pearl

Gouged wood

A decorative technique is used to create intaglio or relief decorations on wooden surfaces. The wood surface is generally cut using various types of chisels and drills; the refining phase sees the use of rasps, files and sandpaper. A gouge is a particular kind of chisel that has a concave blade.

Gouged wood

Peccary skin

Peccaries are small mammals, similar to boars, that reach the maximum length of 1 metre. They live in often very large groups in Central-South American rainforests. Their sturdy skin is used in the leather trade.

Peccary skin

Dark leather

Tuscany is where the most evolved tanning technique was invented by the Etruscans in 800 BC. It is still today a particularly developed region in regards to both vegetable and chrome tanning industries. The area near Pisa, in particular, is called the Leather Area due to the high concentration of tanning businesses. It is the world benchmark for high-quality leathers tanned with avant-garde techniques and low environmental impact.

Dark leather

Light leather

During the Renaissance period a passion for leather spread through the whole of Italy. Leather decorations and objects were made both for the rich, such as engraved leather, stamped leather, wall decorations (see Urbino’s Ducal Palace) and for the less wealthy such as shoes and various soft furnishings.

Light leather

“Vacchetta” leather

A leather obtained through vegetable-tanning. This kind of tanning is an ancient technique, characterized by the use of tannins that are derived, in nature, from tree bark (oak, chestnut, mimosa, etc…). Depending on the type of tree used, the leather took on different colourings and shades, from light brown to darker brown. The principles on which this tanning method was based are the same used today, although we now use machinery that makes the procedure more evolved. The leather obtained by applying animal fat, more specifically tallow, to vegetable-tanned leather is the most traditional kind: classic Tuscan “vacchetta” leather.

“Vacchetta” leather

Hammered iron with anthracite finish

In the 16th century hammered iron became a staple for more sophisticated and richly decorated crafting. However, the demand for hammered iron reached its apex in 1860, when it became even more common and widely used for kitchen utensils, stoves, grillwork, locks and furniture such as four-poster beds.

Hammered iron with anthracite finish

Hammered iron with gold leaf finish

There are many kinds of gilding techniques: water gilding is the most ancient technique but requires a lot of skill. We allow glimpses of Armenian bole, the red clay used as a base to the gold leaf, to show through like in old gilts where you can see the areas where the gold has worn off.

Hammered iron with gold leaf finish

Cipollino marble

Cipollino marble was a marble variety used by the ancient Romans. It was extracted in a number of quarries in Greece, between the modern-day cities of Styra and Karystos. It was used mostly for column shafts, often with large dimensions and mostly smooth (for example the pronaos columns of the Antonius and Faustina Temple in the Foro Romano in Rome). We can also find sculptures such as the crocodile which decorated the water feature of the “Canopus” of Villa Adriana in Tivoli. Quarries of other similar varieties of marble can be found in Spain, The Apuan Alps, North-West Greece and Serbia.

Cipollino marble

Giallo Siena marble

Giallo Siena marble has been extracted on the south-west side of the hills around Siena since Imperial Rome. It was however during the Middle Ages that it began to be extracted not only for local use but explicitly for its evident beauty and for use in religious buildings. Traces of its use are present in the floor mosaics in the Siena Cathedral, in Siena’s Logge del Papa and Logge della Mercanzia, and also in Florence (Santa Maria del Fiore) and Orvieto (Orvieto Cathedral).

Giallo Siena marble

Red Verona marble

Red Verona marble is extracted in the Lessini Mountains in the Verona area. Among the various buildings built with this marble there are notably the Parma Baptistery, the columns of the cloister of the Basilica di San Zeno in Verona and the column-bearing lions of the Porta dei Leoni Rossi of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo.

Red Verona marble

Breccia Medicea marble

Breccia Medicea marble has been used since Ancient Rome. This marble was chosen for cladding and decorations in Tuscany in the 16th century by the Medici family, after whom it was named. It is called “medicea” because it reached the apex of its use under Cosimo I de’ Medici. As the Grand Duke had the monopoly of the Seravezza quarries, he made this variegated marble a symbol of his power using it in the choir of Florence’s Cathedral, in Palazzo Pitti and in the Medici Chapels.

Breccia Medicea marble

Bardiglio marble

Bardiglio marble in all its colour varieties belongs to the same family as White marble, Cipollino marble, Breccia marble and others. They are materials with medium hardness and easy workability. They are often used in wall cladding, flooring, windowsills. Common Bardiglio marble is abundant in Seravezza and Stazzema, in the Apuan Alps near Carrara.

Bardiglio marble

White Statuario marble

White Statuario marble is the historical material used since ancient times to create sculptures and works of art. The marble is extracted from quarries in the Apuan Alps and, depending on the quarry, it acquires unique characteristics. This extremely refined marble has a crystalline and ivory base with grey veins of varying dimensions. The physical properties of Statuario marble make it particularly suitable for chiselling and thus for sculpture in general. Unlike Carrara marble, this material is present on the market only in limited quantities and this is the reason behind its extremely high price.

White Statuario marble

Gold Calacatta marble

Gold Calacatta marble is a marble from Carrara. Its structure is composed of white crystalline limestone and yellow-gold veins that make this marble an internationally first-grade marble.

Gold Calacatta marble

Slate

Slate tends to lighten once extracted until it acquires a light grey pigmentation, as its dark shade is due to carbon residues that oxidate once in contact with oxygen, humidity and UVs. In virtue of its schistosity (i.e. its ability to split along well-defined, smooth parallel surfaces depending on the cleavage planes due to foliation) and its properties it can be used in various artisanal and industrial sectors. Its use as roofing dates back to ancient times and saw its apex first in the Middle Ages and then in the Renaissance. Nowadays it is mainly extracted in quarries situated in Val Fontabuona in Liguria.

Slate

Onix

Onyx was called alabastrum in Latin. Alabastrum derives, as Plinius says, from a fortress called “Alabastra” built in Thebes in Egypt where there were many quarries for temple construction. Before being called alabaster, the stone was called onyx (the word onyx is also found in Genesis Ch. 2). Its particularity is due to the presence of concretion of rock fragments. It is translucent and has variegated zones that are often of a brownish hue and range from a few millimetres to a few centimetres in width, giving this marble a colourful and diaphanous appearance. This stone is nowadays extremely rare and in Italy it can be found in quarries in Lazio and Campania.

Onix

Roman Travertine

In Italy, the best Travertine come from the valley under Tivoli. The Latins called it lapis tiburtinis and made it one of the town’s main construction resources when they began to use rocks that differed from their local tuffs. It was used so extensively that in Italian it became known as «Roman Travertine». It was widely used (or “recycled”, removing it from ancient monuments) from the end of the Middle Ages onwards.

Roman Travertine

Perlato

Among the stones and limestones improperly called “marbles” extracted in Sicily in modern times, the so-called Perlato marble occupies a prominent position. From the second half of the 20th century, Perlato was constantly used for hall flooring, stairways, windowsills and thresholds of public and private buildings.

Perlato

Pietra serena

Pietra serena is a grey sandstone particularly used in architecture and in sculpture. It is typically found in historical Tuscan architecture and particularly in Florence where it was rarely used to cut masonry blocks but rather for isolated or decorative elements such as columns, cornices and ribs.

Pietra serena