Chapter III — The Atelier
NERI KARRA
The Atelier
A working house on Via dei Macci, outside the old Florentine gate, where twenty-two hands carry a craft that began in 1962.
Firenze · Est. MCMLXII
Shop the CollectionPrologue · MCMLXII
A house begun by two hands.
Tomaso and Elena Karra opened their first workshop in Florence in the autumn of 1962. They had been given a small loan, a single oak table, and an introduction to the tanners at Conceria Walpier, a vegetable tannery south of the Arno that had been working with the same bark-and-water method for three generations.
The agreement was uncomplicated and has never been revised. Karra would buy only Walpier leather. Walpier would reserve for Karra the choicest shoulders of each pit. Sixty-three years later, the agreement is still the spine of the house.
From the beginning, Tomaso refused the wholesale route. He set the first production ceiling himself — a figure modest enough that every piece could be sewn, finished, and stamped by a single maker. That figure is still the figure. It is the reason only 2,400 finished pieces leave the atelier each year.
Today the house is led by Tomaso's granddaughter, Beatrice Karra-Ferrante. The tools on the workbench are the same. The tannery is the same. The ceiling has not been raised.
The Makers
Seven hands, twenty-five years or more.
Every Neri Karra piece is constructed by a single master artisan. The maker's initials are monogrammed into the lining before the bag is closed. Below, four of the seven artisans whose tenure with the house exceeds twenty-five years.
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N° 01
Giuliano Conti
Briefcases & Document Cases
With the house since 1986 · 39 years
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N° 02
Maria Landi
Handbags & Soft Totes
With the house since 1989 · 36 years
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N° 03
Piero Mancini
Bespoke Commissions
With the house since 1991 · 34 years
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N° 04
Carla Renzi
Small Leather Accessories
With the house since 1996 · 29 years
Three additional artisans — Salvatore Greco, Lucia Bini, and Andrea Corsi — round out the seven makers whose tenure exceeds twenty-five years. The atelier employs twenty-two makers in total, each working at a single bench, in a single craft.
Provenance · Conceria Walpier, Tuscany
Forty days in the pit.
Our leather is vegetable-tanned in slow pits of oak and chestnut bark by a single generational tannery we have partnered with since the house's first autumn. The process cannot be hurried. Below, the stages that every hide passes through before it reaches a Karra workbench.
Selection
Shoulders chosen from a single herd line. Only hides free of brand marks and healed scars are accepted for the Karra workshops.
The Pits
Forty days suspended in progressively stronger infusions of oak and chestnut bark. The slow vegetable process preserves the hide's grain.
Drying
Hides are hung in the tannery's upper loft for a further two to three weeks, where the Florentine air finishes what the pits began.
The Stitching Floor
Once the leather arrives at Via dei Macci, a single artisan takes ownership of the piece. Twenty-eight hours on average; one hundred eighty for a bespoke commission.
Stewardship
Duties inherited, not chosen.
Two obligations have accompanied the Karra name since the first workshop opened. The first is environmental: the atelier has held Climate Neutral Italy certification since 2021, but the family's own accounting of hides, water, and waste goes back decades earlier. The second is restoration: every piece the house has ever made can be returned, free of charge, to be repaired by the same hands that built it.
Beatrice Karra-Ferrante, the third-generation creative director, frames both duties as inherited rather than adopted. They are part of the agreement with Walpier, and with the seven makers at the bench, and with the clients who have entrusted their pieces to us since 1962.
Read on RestorationThe Collection · MMXXVI
The work, continued.
Each piece in the present collection is the present tense of the 1962 founding: hand-stitched by a single artisan, tanned at a single tannery, finished under a single ceiling of 2,400 pieces per year.
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