Carlo Suino

Carlo Suino was born in Turin in 1963, fifth generation member of a family of umbrella makers. “Each generation did its part, learning, working, improving, inventing and passing along something that left a mark, and which I eventually inherited:

Rare Metiers

at the age of 2, I was already used to falling asleep in the workshop amidst fabric scraps, breathing in all the smells of starch, mordant, celluloid, silk, essences of maple wood, acacia, broom, bamboo, malacca; olfactory memories, the deepest ones… a few years later, I was a curious boy playing amidst the “bocia” (shop boys), watching them cut, thread, bend, sew… because, as grandpa Carlo used to say when I asked him to teach me something: ‘you can’t teach the trade, you have to steal it with your eyes’. So, at twelve years old I mounted my first shaft, at thirteen I was sewing linings at the Adler machine, at fifteen I was assembling parasols. Growing up, I decided to study something useful, and I graduated in dyeing chemistry in order to go back to umbrella making equipped not only with passion, but with new skills.  

After dedicating myself to beach umbrellas for a while, in the early Nineties I decided that umbrellas were more fascinating and they deserved to be valued more, so, in my own distinctive way, I went against the norm. I chose to make increasingly refined, unique and tailor-made umbrellas against the increasingly cheap, mass-produced ones. Umbrellas that can be passed down from grandfather to nephew, versus umbrellas which won’t last three storms.” The accuracy of the cut, careful choice of details and precise workmanship make it so that it takes almost 12 hours to create one single umbrella. Each piece incorporates the expertise and skills acquired over nearly 130 years of umbrella making.

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