Paolo Ricci

Paolo Ricci does what machines cannot: the apron stitch of the Santo driving shoe and the burnished edge of the Armando monk-strap. He stitches with two needles and a single length of waxed linen thread — a Blake variant taught to him by his uncle in the early 1990s — and finishes edges with beeswax warmed on a small copper plate. A pair passes through his hands for roughly ninety minutes before it can be called finished.