Artigiano del Guanto makes hand-stitched gloves through Giovanni Ricciardiello's family workshop in Naples, drawing on the city's glove-making tradition. Omega Gloves also works in Naples, continuing the family glove business established by Gennaro Squillace in 1923. Alberto Squillace represents the fifth generation at Omega, while Artigiano del Guanto produces gloves under its own line.
What makes great glovemakers?
This plate lists 11 shops in 8 countries.
Ask to try both hands: glove sizes vary by maker, so try both gloves on rather than choosing from a chart.
Ask about the lining: unlined, silk-lined and wool-lined gloves suit different seasons, so match the lining to the weather you expect.
Ask whether the gloves are sewn in-house: some shops sell their own work and others stock outside makers, so ask which this pair is.
Explore glovemakers
Use the city plates when they appear below, or open any store for its official door and related ORBIS city and craft links.
Omega was founded in Naples in 1923 by Gennaro Squillace and is now led by Alberto Squillace, the fifth generation of the family to run it — a continuity the house itself describes as unbroken since founding.
Best for A century-old Naples family glove factory
Omega was founded in Naples in 1923 by Gennaro Squillace and is now led by Alberto Squillace, the fifth generation of the family to run it — a continuity the house itself describes as unbroken since founding. It operates out of the Sanità neighborhood, part of the historic Naples glove-making district that grew up around the street still called Via dei Guantai Nuovi, where whole families once specialized in one of the many hand steps a glove requires.
That step count is central to how Omega describes its own process: the site states its gloves pass through "25 production stages, each carried out strictly by hand," from tanning and coloring done at workshops near Vesuvius to cutting, sewing, and quality checks completed in the Naples atelier itself. Leathers include plongé lamb, peccary, carpincho, and deer, lined in silk or in cashmere sourced from Biella; production is kept deliberately small and the house supplies haute couture clients internationally.
Naples' glove trade is UNESCO-recognized as a rare craft, and Omega is presented on its own site as the oldest glove factory still operating in the city — a claim consistent with the 1923 founding date and the unbroken family line to today. It welcomes visitors interested in seeing the craft directly, which fits an atlas built around houses that can be visited, not just ordered from.
Cornelia James was a Viennese refugee who fled Nazi persecution, arrived in England in 1939, and by 1946 had set up her own glovemaking business — starting, as the company's own history page puts it, with color at a time of postwar austerity, work that got her called "the colour Queen of England" by Vogue.
Best for A former Royal Warrant-holding English glovemaker
Cornelia James was a Viennese refugee who fled Nazi persecution, arrived in England in 1939, and by 1946 had set up her own glovemaking business — starting, as the company's own history page puts it, with color at a time of postwar austerity, work that got her called "the colour Queen of England" by Vogue. In November 1947, Norman Hartnell commissioned her to make the going-away gloves for Princess Elizabeth's wedding to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten; that connection held long enough to earn the firm a Royal Warrant in 1979 as "Glovemaker by Royal Appointment" — a warrant the company's own site says it held "from 1979 until the death of the Queen in 2022" — a historic appointment.
The business survived the moment that broke most of the mid-century glove trade — Jean Shrimpton's bare-legged, glove-less, hatless appearance at the 1965 Melbourne Cup, which the company's own history credits with ending gloves as an everyday essential almost overnight — by diversifying into scarves and swimwear rather than closing. It has since recommitted to gloves as its core identity. Cornelia James died in 1999 at 82; her daughter, Genevieve James Lawson, has run the firm as director and creative lead ever since, making it a three-generation family business by the company's own count.
Today the house still hand-cuts and hand-sews from an atelier in Lewes, East Sussex — each pair, per the maker's own description, carrying 96 inches of stitching and the individual glovemaker's signature. The current catalogue spans leather, suede, cashmere and silk gloves, bridal and evening styles, driving gloves, and touch-screen-compatible models, sold through a working e-commerce site that ships internationally with duties and tariffs covered. The London-founded glovemaker has kept making and selling gloves, without a gap in production, for eight decades.
Artigiano del Guanto traces to a workshop in northern Naples run by Giovanni Ricciardiello, described on the brand's own site as a "master glove maker for 50 years" carrying forward the city's old Neapolitan glove-making families.
Best for A family-run Naples workshop hand-stitching gloves for its own line
Artigiano del Guanto traces to a workshop in northern Naples run by Giovanni Ricciardiello, described on the brand's own site as a "master glove maker for 50 years" carrying forward the city's old Neapolitan glove-making families. In 2016 the laboratory was renewed and rebranded under its current name, with Ricciardiello's children — Francesco, Mimmo, and Flora — joining to modernize production and bring the house to a wider market without moving it out of Naples.
The process described is fully manual: leather is dampened and stretched using water-soaked cloths, cut and embroidered by hand, and joined using several traditional stitch types — stroke, hand-stitching, piquet, and saddle stitch — before hand-lining with thermal hands and manual hemming. Materials span African lamb, South American carpincho, Peruvian peccary, Canadian deer, and sheep leather, a materials range consistent with a house working across both fine dress gloves and sturdier everyday pairs.
The workshop states it produces gloves for Giorgio Armani, MaxMara, Coccinelle, and Pinko, which places it as a manufacturing partner to fashion houses as well as a maker selling under its own name — a dual role common among the Naples glove families that once supplied Milan and Paris from the same benches. Alongside Omega, it belongs to Naples' continuing glove-making tradition.
Freda and Harold Morris founded Gloverall in 1951 selling surplus WWII Naval duffle coats from a Holborn warehouse; when military stock ran out around 1953 they began manufacturing their own, including the Monty, named for Field Marshal Montgomery.
Best for Duffle coats, Monty; WWII duffle coat; Officer duffle
Gloverall's origin is tied directly to military surplus. Freda and Harold Morris started the business in 1951 after the Ministry of Defence offered them a large excess of unused WWII Royal Navy duffle coats, which they sold from a Holborn warehouse in London. Demand outstripped the surplus, and by around 1953, with stocks depleted, Gloverall began producing its own versions of the coat. The best-known result is the Monty, named after Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, which became the brand's signature design. Men's duffle coats in the Heritage range, including the Original Monty, continue to be made in England at a Gloverall factory outside London.
Kupika & Co., founded by Betty and Chloe and made in Nairobi, sells kitchen aprons and accessories such as bistro skirt aprons and oven gloves crafted from 100% cotton kitenge, Kenyan brass and repurposed canvas, priced between $45 and $55. The company also runs online cooking classes.
TR Handschuhe is a Vienna glove house run by Thomas Riemer, who entered the trade in his early twenties working alongside his father Erwin Riemer, co-owner of RIKA — an Austrian glove brand founded in the 1960s that made fashion and sports gloves in workshops across Austria and Hungary.
Best for Hand-stitched Vienna gloves in peccary and doeskin from a second-generation
TR Handschuhe is a Vienna glove house run by Thomas Riemer, who entered the trade in his early twenties working alongside his father Erwin Riemer, co-owner of RIKA — an Austrian glove brand founded in the 1960s that made fashion and sports gloves in workshops across Austria and Hungary. That lineage makes Thomas Riemer a second-generation glove maker rather than a new entrant borrowing an old craft's name, at a moment when the site itself notes no new apprentices have entered the Austrian glove trade since 1989.
The process the house describes is hand work at every stage: leather is soaked and stretched for 24 hours before a pair is hand-cut individually, and stitching is done freehand by seamstresses without pre-marked guides, a pace the site puts at about three fully hand-stitched pairs per person per working day. Leather comes, in the site's own words, from "some of the best Austrian, German, Finnish, French or Swiss tanneries," and finished gloves use peccary, goatskin, doeskin, and hair-sheep nappa, lined in cashmere or silk.
The range has grown to include leather accessories — bags, weekender luggage, toiletry cases — alongside the gloves, but gloves remain the founding product and the reason customers first come to the house. A live 2025 collection and worldwide shipping confirm this is a currently trading business, not a legacy name kept alive only in archives.
A century-old glove house tracing to Bärringen, Bohemia, now Austrian, hand-cutting and hand-sewing gloves as its core product.
Best for Czech leather gloves and traditional glove-making craft
Eska was founded by Josef Eska in 1912 in Bärringen, near Karlsbad, and relocated to Thalheim bei Wels in Austria in 1946. The fourth-generation house now concentrates on gloves, from robust professional leather styles to finer everyday pairs. Its product descriptions emphasize hand cutting and hand sewing for fit, making construction and intended use the most useful points of comparison for a buyer. Current head Paul Loos continues the family line.
Maison Poujade was founded in Millau in 1949 by master glove maker André Poujade, working alongside his father-in-law François Calmels.
Best for A third-generation Millau family glove house making fine city gloves
Maison Poujade was founded in Millau in 1949 by master glove maker André Poujade, working alongside his father-in-law François Calmels. The house has stayed in family hands for three further generations: André's daughter Marie-Hélène opened a Poujade glove shop in Montpellier in 1973 and ran it for nearly forty years, and in 2000 her daughter Anne-Laure and son-in-law Christophe took over direction of the Millau house itself.
The stated goal since founding has been the manufacture and sale of high-end city gloves under the Poujade name, worked in leathers the house selects itself — lambskin, peccary, reversed lamb, deer, and ostrich among them. That materials list, carried across four generations of the same family, points to a house built around fine dress gloves specifically rather than leather accessories generally.
France Cuir's company record and a Millau craft-tourism roundup independently document the business's registration and Millau address. Alongside Causse and Agnelle, Poujade is one more of Millau's family glove houses still trading under its founder's name three-quarters of a century on.
Deerskin, elk, and bison work and riding gloves, hand-cut in Oregon since 1941.
Best for Deerskin, elk, and bison work and riding gloves, hand-cut in Oregon since 1941
Sullivan Glove Company has been cutting and stitching leather gloves in Bend, Oregon since 1941, and its own site describes it plainly as "one of the last US glove makers." Eighty-plus years in, the company still runs on the same commitment it states outright: "enduring craftsmanship since 1941." That longevity matters in a trade where most American glove factories closed or moved production overseas decades ago; Sullivan kept its cutting and sewing at home.
The range is built around hide, not novelty: deerskin, elkskin, bison, and goat, worked into form-fitting patterns across classic, motorcycle, work, hunting, rodeo and ranch, and cold-weather lines, plus a wool category and footwear. Named pieces like the Deerskin Roper, Elk Roper, and Buffalo Shorty read as working gloves first — cut for grip and wear rather than styled as accessories — and a limited-run cowhide wildland fire glove signals a maker still supplying real occupational use, not just heritage retail.
For a directory built on trade rather than branding, Sullivan is a straightforward case: a small-town American manufacturer that never stopped making the thing it started with. Best suited to anyone after genuine American work and riding leather, hide-specific and pattern-cut rather than mass die-cut.
Tinku makes pieces from 100% Bolivian alpaca wool that are 100% handmade in Bolivia, working directly with Quechua and Aymara communities. The brand, described as born between Munich and La Paz, sells scarves, shawls, beanies, headbands, gloves, wrist warmers, socks, earrings and blankets.
Tõstamaa Handicraft Shop, at Sadama tee 1 in Tõstamaa, sells local handicrafts including roosimine (inlay) knitted gloves, accessories, postcards and Tõstamaa folk costumes. It is run as a community centre passing on regional heritage crafts.
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