Features | Entrepreneurs
Luxury,
by Way of Italy Ippolita Rostagno fosters Italian craftsmanship through bringing exquisite home brands to America WRITTEN BY
Erin Tallman
T
hirty years ago, Italians began discouraging their children from entering the design and craft industry. Ippolita Rostagno, whose dual citizenship offered her the good fortune of growing up in Florence and later studying in the United States, has been traveling back and forth between the two countries for many years. As time advanced, she noticed more and more empty design shops in Florence. As a jeweler and founder of the jewelry brand Ippolita, she was concerned. “There’s been a generational gap here where the kids have been discouraged to go into the family business, so crafts are dying,” Ippolita Rostagno said during an interview for American Essence.
“This type of work is about experience and little to do with book learning. If there’s a 30-year gap, it’s hard to fill that, so I went into a panic about it. I couldn’t get Italians to be in the same panic as me, though. It was a perspective issue; they were too close to it.” The artisans didn’t see the urgency. The idea that everything was within reach prevented them from seeing what was happening. If they needed a window fixed, for example, they could go down the street and find a specialist to fix it. Their inability to see the wall the industry had hit convinced Rostagno that the tradition of craftsmanship in Italy was about to vanish. “As I tried to get attention to this problem, both pages Seeing that Italian artisans were dying out, Ippolita Rostagno knew she could salvage these brands by introducing them to American consumers. Above, furnishings by Salda, a fifth-generation furniture company from Brianza, Italy.
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