Company History
Artisans of Luxury, since 1949, Agresti has been a worldwide benchmark for innovative luxury wood products. Originally located in the heart of Florence, our factory, now just outside its medieval walls, is an ultra-modern manufacturing facility, continuing in the long tradition of Florentine craftsmanship.
Design, Function, Quality and Luxury are the features that make our creations unique: the latest generation of Home Safes hidden in our jewelry armoires, biometric openings, watch winder chests using sophisticated mechanisms to charge automatic watches ... state of the art compartments to house jewelry, pens, watches, cufflinks and gaming pieces. Combining precious woods and metals, with original ideas, handmade by Florentine artisans, always makes an Agresti product different from the rest ... placing Agresti as a leader in a niche of the luxury market.
Florence, Italy has an exceptional artistic heritage. There, the forefathers of the Renaissance. Botticelli, Donatello, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci showed their artistry. And there, over 60 years ago, Pia and Oswaldo Agresti began producing unique cabinetry in the Florentine style. Focusing on fine jewelry cases and armoires, they soon became famous for their exceptional style and workmanship.
Product lines were extended to jewelry safes and related luxury lifestyle cabinetry for games, watches, cufflinks, pens and other collectables. They found rare Italian elm burls and sliced them to yield distinctive veneers, which when laminated to several crossed plies of poplar, became a durable and warp-free material. That unique briarwood construction soon became the Agresti signature.
In the Agresti factory today, dedicated workers hand-craft each and every component. Yet this is a quite modern factory, where accurate saws and CNC machinery facilitate mass production, great tools for the skilled work staff that is totally focused on producing component parts with exceptional quality. Assuring fine finishes is still a manual job and experienced workers process and inspect each and every component part. Sealing and finish sanding is still done by hand by skilled craftsmen, assisted by powered equipment, but using their trained eyes to obtain perfect part flatness. Applying lacquer is also a hand operation, with each coat visually inspected to insure total coverage on all surfaces. After drying, cabinet drawers and exposed internal panels are ready to be lined with soft, but durable, tarnish resistant suede-like material. Here again, a job for skilled workers with an in-born feel for quality finally, downstream, final assembly commences. Finished components are glued and joined together. Ball-bearing slides are installed in larger cabinets to assure low friction on their larger drawers. Workers install gold plated key locks on most units to provide safe storage of valuables , using tiny screws great care to prevent splitting, often employing their own familiar and well-used hand-tools.
The end result? Beautifully crafted jewelry boxes and jewelry chests, statue bases, pen cases, cuff-link chests and gorgeous free-standing jewelry armoires. Elegant watch storage cases and even custom cabinets fitted with Watchwinders, perfect for collectors of fine watches.
Today, the next generation, Francesca and Paolo Agresti together with Pia continue the tradition of Oswaldo, who has sadly passed on. Agresti – a famous name in the world of luxury cabinetry.
