Leather

Cellerini has made leather goods from a first-floor atelier on Via del Sole since the late 1950s. The workshop has always worked to order - every bag, wallet and travel piece cut, stitched and assembled by hand to the customer's own choice of leather, colour and hardware. What's shown is a single configuration; almost everything here can be remade in a different skin.

Giulio Giannini e Figlio has bound books and marbled paper in Florence since 1856, run today by the same family six generations on. Their leather goods lean on the old bookbinder's construction - half-bound, leather at the spine and corners where an object takes its wear, the family's own hand-marbled paper across the rest, no two sheets the same. Notebooks, photo albums and wedding albums are hand-sewn inside, gathered and stitched the way books were made before glue.

Two very different leather traditions - one built around bespoke bags, the other around books - and the same conviction that a hand-cut edge outlasts a machine-stamped one.

Read our guide to spotting genuine Italian leather.