Italian sunglasses and eyewear brands made by hand: the workshops and designers to know
A pencil sketch, a sheet of acetate, hundreds of hand operations. Italian sunglasses and eyewear brands made by hand: Piero Massaro's atelier near Venice, Kuboraum's Masks, Sestini's Florentine lily and three more names, optical and sun.
Some glasses you buy. Others you choose, the way you would choose a painting. Behind the second kind there is almost always a person: someone who drew a shape in pencil and followed it, step by step, all the way to the polishing wheel. That is the Italy we care about. The one that signs its work.
01 / The drawing
It starts with a pencil
Piero Massaro’s road runs from Sicily to Milan and ends in the Veneto. In 2003 he founded his company, Italiana Design, in Mirano, a few kilometres from Venice. Every model begins on paper, drawn by hand, with acetate samples spread across the table.
His frames look like nobody else’s: sculpted volumes, layers of colour that only reveal themselves in profile, hinges designed as small objects in their own right. The Silmo d’Or, the international eyewear award presented in Paris, has gone to him three times.
02 / The material
Layer on layer, until it catches the light
A handmade frame doesn’t come out of a mould. Sheets of acetate are stacked and bonded, then the front is milled, curved and finished. Last comes the polishing, by hand, until the surface reflects light without a mark.
It is slow work, and it shows. The thickness changes along the front, the colours shift as you turn your head, the hinge sits buried in the material. These are the details that make a pair recognisably yours years later.
03 / Kuboraum
Masks, not glasses
Kuboraum was born in Berlin, in a former post office on the old border between East and West. Behind it are the artist and designer Livio Graziottin and the anthropologist Sergio Eusebi.
The brand calls its frames masks, and it isn’t a pose: these are shapes that redraw the face. Dreamed in Berlin, made by hand in Italy. If you want a frame people remember, start here.
04 / Sestini
The Florentine lily, on the hinge
Sestini is Carlo Sestini’s project. Each frame is made by hand in small Italian workshops, in Italian acetate, and takes more than two hundred steps. The models have no codes, only numbers spelled out in Italian: Quattro, Undici, Sedici.
Look at the hinges. The Florentine lily is drawn there as two dolphins meeting, and inside the temples the house emblem is enamelled by hand in green. A small signature, seen only by you when you take the glasses off.
05 / Three more names
Como, Treviso, and Stockholm by way of Italy
Clarissa Oliverio. An artist from Como who turns her paintings into frames, in limited, numbered editions. She founded the brand in 2021 with Emanuele Dani.
VAVA. Geometric frames produced in family-owned factories around Treviso, in recyclable Mazzucchelli acetate or aluminium, with Barberini mineral lenses.
Oscar Magnuson. Swedish design, made by hand in the brand’s Italian factory from bio-acetate derived from wood and cotton fibres.
All six brands are in one place: handmade Italian eyewear, optical and sun. For the wider picture, read our guide to independent luxury eyewear brands.
The OCCHIO! selection
Six frames to try
See all handmade Italian eyewear
Questions
Before you choose
What does “handmade” mean for a pair of glasses?
That the decisive stages, from joining the layers of acetate to shaping, finishing and polishing, are done by craftspeople rather than an automated line. It takes time, which is why the runs are small.
Which Italian sunglasses brands make their frames by hand?
In our selection: Sestini, Piero Massaro and Clarissa Oliverio, all Italian, plus VAVA, produced around Treviso. Kuboraum (designed in Berlin) and Oscar Magnuson (designed in Stockholm) also have their frames made by hand in Italy.
Can the frame be adjusted to my face?
Yes. Acetate is adjusted with gentle heat: at our boutique in Crema we shape the front and temples so the frame sits straight and stays put.
Can prescription lenses be fitted?
Yes, in the optical frames and in many of the sun models, depending on shape and prescription. Write to us before ordering and we will check together. Progressive lenses need measurements taken in person, with the frame on, at the boutique.
Can I try them in Crema?
Yes, at OCCHIO! in Crema, Via XX Settembre 15, forty minutes from Milan. Write to us before you come and we will have the frames you want ready.
OCCHIO! · Crema, Italy
A frame with a signature
These frames are chosen up close: the layers of colour, the thickness, the hinge. Browse them online with worldwide shipping, or come and hold them in our boutique in Crema.
Sources and images
Piero Massaro: pieromassaro.it. Kuboraum: kuboraum.com. Sestini: sestini.com. Clarissa Oliverio: clarissaoliverio.com. VAVA: vavaeyewear.com. Oscar Magnuson: oscarmagnuson.com. Official brand photographs, used editorially for products sold by OCCHIO!.