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The Cedar
The Cedar is a legendary tree, the Phoenicians used it to build great ships, and it is believed to be the tree used to build King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. Thanks to its strength and its seductive aromatic resin, it is a symbol of longevity and grandeur, considered incorruptible, to the extent that for the Latins anything worthy of immortalization was digna cedro.
For centuries cedarwood was widely used in medicine and Ayurvedic practise exploits the therapeutic virtues of this wood – considered antibacterial, stimulating and anti-depressive. Without forgetting those wonderfully chewable pencils, on the wooden desks of our primary schools.
Products with inside Cedar finish. Gliss-Up, Pass-Word
Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus is a kind thought – honey, sweets, essential oils – it’s fun – think of the greedy koalas that devour its leaves – it is fresh and you can smell it in the air – the scent of bar-b-qs and bonfi res on the beach. Like the Cedar, it is a miraculous and versatile tree, widely used in pharmacology for its phytotherapeutic properties, in buildings and in interior design as a windbreaker, a quality wood, tough and durable for building houses, interiors and boats.
Heat treatment can help affect the tannins in the raw material to achieve darker colours similar to the smoking process.
Products in Euclyptus finish 505 Gliss-Up, Pass-Word, Segreto, Strand, Sweetdreams
Standing desks have a long and illustrious history: polymath Leonardo da Vinci was rumoured to have used them in the 15th century, followed by the likes of Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf. Early proponents commissioned high desks directly from carpenters, or used the taller shelves of bookcases, until manually adjustable sit-stand desks were invented that used hand cranks, pins, screws, or gas cylinders that compress and expand. UniFor’s latest workstation, however, the Spring System designed by architect Antonio Citterio, uses springs to counteract the weight of the desk as it rises.
When Monk re-enters Molteni&C’s catalogue this year, it will mark 35 years since the chair was last in production. “Designed by Afra and Tobia Scarpa, ‘Monk’ is simple and solid,” reads the company’s 1990 catalogue, the simple serif font set off by a photograph of two Monk chairs, tipped back on their rear legs as if preparing to march forward. Today, as Monk prepares itself to step foot into the present, this description of “simple and solid” remains a strong summation of its virtues, but the chair's simplicity conceals the sophistication of the design approach that led to its initial creation back in 1973.
The catalogue for UniArm, the new monitor arm from UniFor, opens with a few pages of closeup photography of the arm’s sleek, hinged form, followed by a double-page spread filled with an X-ray image of the product.
