Riva Furniture Made in Italy
26 May 2010
“A Riva Flows Through It”
Yesterday I wrote a blog on some wonderful laundry room designs by Riva, but when I went to their site to check them out a bit further, I came across a number of other items that pretty much blew my mind. One of the things about having worked with wood as much as I have is that it gives me a huge appreciation for what others are able to do with it. With all the talent I know about, I would never brag about my own abilities in this field, but I do think it’s fair to say that I hold my own. But then I come across some of the furniture makers like, oh, say like the subject of today’s blog, Riva.
There are so many difficulties that have to be overcome to make a viable firm like Riva, starting with the little item of making furniture in the first place. If all I’m going to do is copy what someone else has done, it tends to be fairly easy. Oh, those who do replicas of some of the more exotic designs in furniture are sure to howl, should they read this blog. And rightfull
y so. Those glorious Newport secretary desks immediately come to mind. With the many carvings, finials and precision work involved, the amount of time to complete one the first time out is normally about six months. And people with my abilities-such as they are-need not apply! But even so, it is still a fact that even something as glorious as a majestic six-shell Goddard-Townsend secretary does not need to be designed because it already has been.
Designing furniture takes quite a bit, and designing furniture that sells takes even more. And then if one should be able to design and build furniture that sells in bulk, that would pretty much be the ultimate, wouldn’t it? I especially think it would be if the designs themselves were worthy of the fuss I intend to make with this blog, because I do think Riva has done just that.
Riva has come up with furniture designs that are both simple and elegant. I have never seen an arm chai
r made entirely of a single block of wood, but made in such a way that one can see at once that it must surely be a most comfortable chair to sit in. And their bedroom suites do nothing so much as glorify the wood of which they are made. I personally think there should be a special place in the nether regions for those who stain wood once they know the difference between wood that has been stained to look like walnut and glorious walnut that hasn’t been stained at all because it doesn’t need it. But that’s just me! Even so, I could not help being impressed with the many natural-finished products produced by Riva, but once I got to know them a bit better I knew I shouldn’t have been surprised at what I saw.
Riva has been making furniture in Italy for some ninety years now, three generations of dedicated and creative designers and craftsmen. The result is a huge collection where practicality and aesthetics meet in a rare balance, as shown by their meticulous attention to detail. They have also made a definite choice, both in the quality of the materials they use, and in using strictly reforested timber. Best of all, from this old bird’s perspective, they use solid timber for the bulk of their output and finish their work with natural oil and wax based treatments. I still remember the awe I felt when I learned to apply that kind of finish. Life being what it is, someone has surely learned how to spray on that type of finish by now, but all the joy is in applying it by hand, because you feel the oil and the wood and something of a kinship with all the many millions of woodworkers who have gone before. It’s almost as though you were downstream of them, which is surely how the people at Riva feel.
Joseph
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