There are few workshops like this one still around, not even on the "other bank of the Arno" that once pulsed with craftsmen working at their benches. Founded in 1887 by the Filippi family the firm was taken over in 1945 by a man who had been working there for twenty years, Alfonso Bini. It was he who, in 1973, along with the designer Mario Mariotti, realized that certain hat blocks could become avant-garde sculptures and original containers if they were just tilted a bit or turned over.

This was how t he original production of milliner's models - which is extremely rare (only Paris and Düsseldorf have workshops of this kind) was flanked - first as a playful sideline - by the items that are now available in the finest stores in Italy and which the company exports to several countries around the world, including the U.S.A., Germany and Japan.
In the meantime Luciano and Roberto Bini came into the business and have carried it on since their father passed away in 1985.

It's an art that has survived through the years and through the crises that have touched the trade, and today bears witness to the purest Florentine artisan tradition.