Company history
A step back in time
Angelo Gaito's workshop in Via S. Giacomo
The founder of the company, Angelo, was a traveler and trader of precious items who arrived in Naples in 1864 from Fasano di Puglia and began his business in Via S. Giacomo, near Via Toledo. Bisciutteria, jewelery, pocket watches, silverware of all kinds read the sign of his first shop, in Via S. Giacomo, active there until 1905. Those were the years in which the city lived its Belle Époque and Via Toledo was the beating heart of the social, intellectual and worldly life of the time. The tables of the cafes renowned for their sorbets and ice creams were packed with crowds at any time of day and night and from the newly inaugurated Galleria Umberto along the entire Via Toledo, between the facades of the ancient noble palaces, the signs of the cafes made their way, where the fashionable varieties of Paris were set up and the Neapolitan vedettes with French names were celebrated.
Leonardo Gaito
Right in Via Toledo, at number 278, Leonardo Gaito opened in 1906 the historic "shop" which has remained unchanged over time, with the two large windows on the street, the unmistakable sign in gold lettering on a black background and the original rosewood furnishings of the interior. The Gaito jewelry, heir to that Neapolitan goldsmith school that boasted a centuries-old tradition, was able to open up at the beginning of the twentieth century to Art Nouveau together with other famous names that gave their creations in the field of jewelry, but also to the jewelry of character sculptural, an international breath. The city itself, then, was a capital of tourism with the presence of the Savoy and the jet set characters housed in large hotels, who influenced fashion with their precise choices of taste.
Continuity of tradition
Giulio Gaito, his wife Maria and their son Leonardo
Young men of just twenty and eighteen years old, Angelo and Giulio, sons of Leonardo, took up the inheritance when their father passed away, together with Maria, Giulio's wife and then their son Leonardo. Today it is Maria, daughter of Leonardo, together with her husband Andrea, who continues the family business with enthusiasm, offering her unique pieces to those customers who from one generation to the next have relied on the advice and discreet elegance of Gaito jewelry.
Maria Gaito with her husband Andrea Ricco
At the same time, Maria experiments with solutions linked to contemporaneity that travel new paths, with the proposal of different materials, such as hard and semiprecious stones, linked in silver and gold that she designs herself, to create less "demanding" objects but not for this less refined in the workmanship and in the combination of colors.
The 150th anniversary booklet of the Gaito jewelry
It was Maria Gaito, who inherited so many sketches and projects for those jewels that have characterized the style of the company over the years, who wanted to share the drawings of her grandfather Giulio's notebook with her customers today, not for a nostalgic re-enactment of a unique and unrepeatable moment of Neapolitan jewelry, but to offer today's public the testimony of the vitality of a family tradition that spans generations.