CHALICE AND PATEN

In January 2012, Mattia Magoni asked Guido Dettoni to create a wooden chalice and paten that would accompany him from 26 May 2012, the day of his ordination.

After meeting Mattia, Dettoni accepted the commission with conviction.

He modeled both the chalice and the paten in wax. The movement of his hands was based on the same material and, being blind during the creation, he postponed seeing until he had found the shape.

The chalice was born from the material, contained in full hands that left their fingerprints and furrows in it: the priest’s hands would thus become the chalice itself. The shape of the paten, on the other hand, was born from the kneading of the bread, and in it could be felt the imprints of the thumbs and forefingers, and in the center, hinted at, the imprint of the Cross of Bethlehem, which Dettoni, with his eyes open and by choice, had placed in the base of the chalice, almost as if to support it.

The grooves of the fingers on the wax chalice were asymmetrical and the concavity irregular.

Dettoni then resorted to 3D scanning of the original in order to redraw it on the computer screen, in order to obtain the divine symmetry (not human and never found in nature) and the geometry of the circle and the concavity of the chalice, which would later be plated with silver.

The mesh of the virtual design generated the points for the numerical control of Sapely’s wood milling machine.

The 3D scanning of the paten made it possible to obtain an exact circle and transform the wax into the wood, preserving the organicity of the imprints.

On 26 May 2012, Don Mattia celebrated his first mass in the parish church of San Pietro Apostolo in Trescore Balneario, Bergamo.