The Bridge

The Bridge began in 1969 as Il Ponte Pelletteria, founded in the Florence area by five Florentine leatherworkers: Fiorenza Benvenuti, Fernando Biagioni, Roberto Boncinelli, Andrea Ferri and Arturo Senserini. The company took the English name The Bridge in 1975, a direct translation of 'il ponte,' and in 1987 moved its production headquarters to Scandicci, the leather-district town outside Florence long associated with Tuscan tanning and leatherworking. Since 2016, The Bridge has been part of the Piquadro group, though it continues to operate as its own brand. The house's identifying material is vegetable-tanned Tuscan leather, hand-polished rather than machine-finished, which ages by darkening and developing a patina with wear and light exposure over years of use, as opposed to chrome-tanned leather, which does not develop the same effect. That five-founder, cooperative origin, a group of leatherworkers rather than a single designer-founder, combined with continuous production in the Florence/Scandicci district since 1969, is what distinguishes The Bridge's account of itself within Tuscany's leather-goods trade.