Today, five wonderful workers in Milan lovingly handcraft Villa cufflinks. Villa is a small operation and design, production and sales all happen in close proximity. There are two types of cufflink, what Filippo calls “basic” and “special”, although the “basic” ones are still incredibly intricate and special.
Producing custom-made pieces is Villa’s passion and the team takes great delight in designing and producing any idea that their clients come up with, however outlandish.
There are no limits to what they can make. In the past Villa has made charming cufflinks in the shape of bottles of wine, cars, cameras, musical instruments, and even pets. These utterly original pieces display remarkable attention-to-detail and take between two and four weeks to craft by hand in the workshop.
At the “basic” level, there are around 20 different shapes: hexagons, squares, circles, all mounted on gold and most featuring a range of stunning gemstones, from sapphires,
jade and rubies to emeralds, onyx and lapis lazuli. It only takes a couple of hours for these talented craftsmen to make an amazing, striking piece. The cufflinks come in sumptuous presentation boxes, which enhance their already strong visual impact.
The wide range of materials that make these innovative designs into real cufflinks come from all over the world. Most of the beautiful gemstones are bought in Italy but the Villa brothers often pick up special stones like
blood jasper (also known as heliotrope) and other materials on their travels in Asia and the Americas. Petrified wood is bought in Germany. This combination of expressive design and the finest materials makes Villa’s cufflinks very special indeed.
