We smell it for the first time, and we cannot stop breathing it in. But what stays with us is a gesture: hands tying each bag of Biscotti di Prato with a blue thread. A simple gesture, almost automatic. We would understand it later, but that thread was tying together an entire story.
At the museum-workshop in Florence, we were taken back to 1858; here, the story of Antonio Mattei is preserved through documents, original recipes, and memories passed down over time. Though 160 years long, it is a story that has never changed direction. Antonio Mattei entrusted it to the Pandolfini family, who do not carry on his surname, but his dream and passion.
Within each of them was the same commercial vision: a brand that does not want to conquer the world, but to be indispensable to its own. A Tuscan brand for Tuscans… and for anyone who wants, even just for a moment, to feel Tuscan. From this awareness, the commercial strategy was born: targets, touchpoints, priorities. We put them down in black and white, so that the storytelling would not remain just a beautiful story.
Instead of creating something new, we looked at what was already there.
Starting with the logo, which we redesigned, inspired by the signs of Italian botteghe.
We took a rich but fragmented narrative and stitched it back together with that blue thread.
The thread became the symbol of the indissoluble bond with Tuscany: what unites past and present, connects people around a table, and ties the oldest memories to the recollection of special moments.
A narrative that also comes to life through the Montecatini typeface by Louise Fili, Capraia by CAST the illustrations by Jonathan Calugi — which, in a continuous line, tell of gestures, emotions, and memories — and the everyday photography of Clara Vannucci. All Tuscan, because a deeply rooted brand could only be told by those who know that territory from within.
The same thread also runs through the slices of Pan Brioche, where the identity takes on a more everyday expression.
The back of each pack becomes a narrative space: each variant suggests a moment, a pairing, an occasion. Sweet or savory, breakfast or aperitivo. It is not the brand telling you how to eat it: it is you who bring your own Mattei moment to life. Calugi’s illustrations return, lighter and more everyday than ever, because the thread is still there, woven into the gestures of daily life.
That morning, at five o’clock, we did not yet know how we would tell all of this. We only knew that that ritual — those hands, that thread, that knot — said far more than words ever could.
Il Biscottificio Antonio Mattei is one of the most iconic names in the Italian confectionery tradition. Founded in Prato in 1858, for over 160 years it has carried forward a culture of production that has turned Biscotti di Prato into a symbol recognized far beyond Tuscany.
