Riva 1920

Be prepared to be serenaded with the embodiment of beauty and wellness in XTRA showroom. Riva 1920 from Italy is available in XTRA with a charming selection of its renowned cedar wood sculptures by famous designers such as Paolo Pininfarina, Riccardo Arbizzoni, Aldo Cibic, Franco Bizzozzero, Mario Botta, and others.

Inspired by “giant” scale pop art, the sculptural objects range from a bench in the shape of pencil sharpener to lovely heart-shaped paperweights. The products are made from completely natural wood and hand-finished in natural wax and oil without the addition of any treatment or chemical agent.

Movements, cracks and changes in the appearance of the wood are intrinsic characteristics of these items and result from the natural settlement and diverse environmental conditions.

Molletta bench
The Molletta bench, in playing on the typical out-of-scale quality of Pop art, gives a hyper-natural interpretation to the cedar wood. The object thus acquires a double life: the first is that of a roomy seat designed for large interiors and for the outdoors.

*All the above objects are sculpted with immense respect to nature using only natural wax and oil.

Lebenon cedar is from the plant family Pinaceae and was highly sought after as an excellent source of timber for ancient woodworking. Thousands of years ago, mountain slopes of the entire Near East was covered with extensive forests of Lebenon cedar trees. While it originated from the Eastern Mediterranean, it has been cultivated in Italy and the rest of Europe since the end of the 1700’s in parks and gardens. Today, only a few hundred are left in its natural habitat. Conical with horizontal tiers of lush leafage, it grows fast and reaches heights of 15m to 40m with a breadth of 6m to 10m for its canopy. Riva 1920 retrieves cedar Lebenon cedar logs which have fallen in the wake of natural catastrophes such as mudslides, landslides and gales, or those which have been cut down routinely for safety reasons such as for blocking roads or being too near to houses. These giant trees come from Northern Italy, especially Piedmont and Lombardy, and the wood is heavy and resistant, smelling strongly of balsam. It proffers many natural properties with health benefits. In fact, cedar wood essence and essential oil can be attributed to its properties as an antiseborrheic, antiseptic, antispasmodic, tonic, diuretic, insecticidal and fungicidal substance. Using advanced technology in the form of CNC machines with five or six axes, the wood can be processed to produce any desired shape and form. The finished products are then sanded and finished by hand. The collection, signed by internationally famous designers, has over 100 items, including stools, benches and chairs. Thanks to its additional quality of being a moth-repellent, this wood is also used for wardrobes and other storage units.