Ann Skidmore recalls her stays in Italy with such passion and adoration that Arte Italica seems like a pre-destined enterprise. The 11-year-old business was among the first in our industry to import pewter, ceramics, and glassware direct from Italian artisans to eager merchants. Arte Italica – art from Italy – has lived up to its name. Its appealing range of assortments has its inspiration from the Tuscan villas in the countryside surrounding Florence. From the moment she first set foot in Umbria – a 1983 vacation – Skidmore sensed a life-altering transformation was afoot. “I wish I were Italian,” she joyfully avers. “I love everything about Italy – the food, the people, the language, the design. I have a real appreciation for the creativity that comes out of this country.”

It was precisely that creativity that Skidmore was anxious to share. She was a stay-at-home mom when she hatched the idea to import the products she loved. “The products and artifacts I saw were overwhelming,” she says. “I couldn’t find anything like it here.” This desire built over a decade (Skidmore waited until the eldest of her two children went to college) so she could seriously – and attentively – pursue this nagging muse. In 1997, Skidmore once again made the trip to Italy, this time with a mission. “I didn’t have a clue how to make this work,” she laughs, “but I was continually drawn to Italy and its artisans.” Skidmore had a discerning eye and a developed brain and as she walked the country’s MACEF fair, one contact beget another and before long Skidmore settled on importing pewter (still the company’s largest category) under the Arte Italica name. “The pewter attracted me immediately,” Skidmore relays. “There’s nothing like Italian pewter.”

With product in tow, Skidmore then had to figure out how to wholesale it. “My first warehouse was in my garage and I hired my kids’ friends to unpack shipments,” she chuckles. The evolution of becoming a professional organization was difficult, Skidmore accedes. “There was a lot of hit and miss,” she acknowledges, “and I made some mistakes early on.” Skidmore quickly realized she needed a New York presence so an initial booth at the New York Gift Fair was parlayed into a way before-its-time, lifestyle-merchandised gorgeous Manhattan showroom that really cemented the business as a player. “We knew it was important to set the tone of who we were from the start,” Skidmore posits. “We used authentic Italian furniture to display the products and set the showroom as rooms of a house. It was lifestyle before that was even a buzzword. I was simply recreating the rooms I fell in love with in Italy.”

Within a couple of years, ceramics complemented the lead-free, food-safe pewter collections and in 2000 they were combined to create a product that has since been copied ad infinitum. Tuscan, the white ceramics with pewter trim, was the ideal elixir for Arte Italica as well as a revolutionary design which led to a tripling of sales that year. “Tuscan took us to a whole new level,” Skidmore recalls. “It was an immediate hit and became identifiable with Arte Italica.”

Over the past decade, business has grown at a steady clip. Terri Casner came on three years ago to work with Skidmore on product development. “Ann has such an amazing respect for Italian art, design, and history, and has worked hard to bring products here without losing the respect and pride she sees in the artisans,” Casner says. The relationships, she adds, are much more familial than business-like. It’s those factories – there are about a dozen, ranging from small (eight-men workshops) to large (200 workers), most located north of Rome – which are the company’s lifeblood. “We work hard to find smaller artisans who haven’t been discovered,” says Skidmore, “but it’s a fine line we walk depending on small artisanal workshops for shipments.” And despite rising costs and a stomach-churning fluctuating dollar, Skidmore is committed to maintaining production in Italy. “I’m convinced ‘Made in Italy’ means something to people who appreciate quality and design,” she says.