La Bella Gazette

After 50 Years Of Crafting Leather Bags By Hand, This Italian Artisan Is Retiring, Her Final Pieces Are Now Up To 80% Off

By Maria Conti | October 28, 2025

Deep in the sun-washed hills of Tuscany, there’s a quiet studio that smells of cedarwood and tanned hide.

Here, 78-year old artisan Junie Bianchi moves with quiet grace, every gesture precise, every motion part of a sacred ritual honed over a lifetime.

For over 50 years, she’s stitched, cut, and shaped leather the way her father taught her when she was a young girl.

There’s no rush. No whirring industrial machines. Just Junie and her tools, music playing on the radio, and the warm light of the afternoon sun streaming in from the window.

The walls of Junie’s workshop are covered in leather samples, faded patterns, old sketches, and spools of thread.

Each bag she creates bears the marks of her touch: no two exactly alike, with subtle variations that make every piece one of a kind.

Locals still remember when Junie, then a young woman, took over her late father’s leather shop in Siena. Her father had been a respected artisan for decades, and at first, few believed that his daughter could carry on his legacy. But with time, Junie didn’t just match his skill, she surpassed it.

Word of her craftsmanship soon spread far beyond Italy. Travellers began seeking out her shop, taking home her bags as cherished souvenirs from “the woman who still makes them by hand.”

Soon, her designs found their way onto the shoulders of women from Paris to New York: women who prefer true craftsmanship over cheap mass production, and meaning over logos.

Now, at seventy-eight, Junie feels the weight of time taking its toll on her hands. Her fingers tremble slightly. Her eyes tire faster than they used to.

Still, she returns to her workbench every morning, the place that has held her entire life together.
“It’s time to rest,” she smiles. “But not before I finish my last collection.”

Before closing her doors for good, Junie created one final series of leather bags: a heartfelt ode to the craft that defined her life.

She hopes each piece will outlive her, carrying fragments of her story wherever it goes. Each bag, she says, carries a piece of her soul.

Before retiring, Junie made a decision that surprised everyone around her.

Rather than see her final pieces locked away in collectors’ cabinets, Junie wanted them to be used, loved, and carried into the world.

So she quietly listed the entire collection online, offering her life’s final work at up to 80% off, a farewell gift from the woman who made these pieces by hand.

Not because her work has lost value, but because she believes beautiful things should be carried, touched, and loved, not locked away or admired from afar.

“If my bags can find new homes all over the world,” she said, “then my story lives on through them, even when I stop working.”

Now, her final pieces are departing the workshop, each one marketing the quiet end of an extraordinary legacy. When they’re gone, they’re gone forever.