Filippo Mastinu & Rosa Bittolo Bon

VUD

Woodworker

©Damiano Tommasi

©Davide Maria Palusa

©Massimo Battista

Convivial creations

Filippo and Rosa run a shop with open-plan workshop
They create wooden boards, tables and ceramic tableware
All their creations are pratical and meant for conviviality

Husband and wife duo, Filippo Mastino and Rosa Bittolo Bon, used to work in Venice as architects, when they decided to move to Trieste and open their own craft business, VUD, less than ten years ago. A designer with great passion and talent for construction, Filippo turned into a contemporary craftsman, able to follow his projects from conception to completion. He focused on wood, “sweet and terrible material", and started crafting simple, elegant objects assembled with no screws, like boards and tables. Step by step, he added furnishing accessories and small decorative items. In their workshop products are created in front of the clients, thanks to the open-plan workshop. Behind every single product or every choice Filippo and Rosa make, lies a clear brand identity, a key to their success: VUD objects are meant for conviviality.

Interview

©Davide Maria Palusa

©Massimo Battista

Where did you learn your craft?: Filippo: It’s not a family thing. I hold an architecture degree, but craftsmanship has always played a key role both in my life and at work. I used to run construction workshops for students at the IUAV University in Venice.
Would you class yourself as a carpenter?: Filippo: I don’t feel like a carpenter. My passion is for construction, first of all. I like working metals and ceramics as well, but wood has become my job. Wood is both sweet and terrible to master, but it is beautiful and warm and it’s strictly linked to the idea of home and conviviality.
Do you have a brand strategy?: Rosa: The development of our business was spontaneous and progressive. We had a passion and an idea, crafting and selling objects for shared moments, and then we tried to add new elements to our project step by step to establish our own identity.
Why do ceramics feature in your shop?: Rosa: Ceramics is another great passion of ours so we opened a small workshop within our bottega, where we craft and cook simple, clean objects in ceramics. Objects related sharing social moments as friends or family.

Filippo Mastinu & Rosa Bittolo Bon are expert artisans: they began their career in 2012