OUR TEAM
HISTORY
Looking to the future
Now
Today, with the main showroom in Monaco, the company offers a series of exceptional services to its clients and proudly takes actions on world-wide matters such as preservation of the oceans by supporting initiatives at the Prince Albert II Foundation of Monaco.
Always driven by a good challenge and seeking new opportunities for the company, Alberto Vitale, decided in 2021, that it was time to adopt a creative and forward-thinking strategy entering the huge American market despite the world’s health crisis and moving forward with new partnerships opening to the online world.
Aware of the challenges faced by the diamonds industry, and believing in upholding high ethical grounds, Vitale 1913 adopted a ‘conflict-free guarantee’ in order to certify the source of its diamonds are not related to the illicit trafficking of stones or abuse of employees.
The heritage of Vitale 1913
2017
In October 2017, Mr. Alberto Vitale was just finishing his first collection in tribute to the beauties of the Mediteranean Sea. Passionate by the Ocean, and aware of the challenges of its preservation, he dedicated itto this cause naming it Ocean Treasures.
In collaboration with the Prince Albert II of Monaco’s Foundation, a part of the benefits of this collection is given to the Foundation within the intention of supporting ocean protection, while fighting against water pollution, mainly plastics.
The Ocean Treasures celebrate corals, a living organism essential to the survival of the oceans and the maintenance of life on Earth, as it plays a vital role in the ocean’s fauna and flora. By using only corals destroyed by the volcano eruption naturally from Sciacca, a mythical Sicilian town, Alberto Vitale found an ethical ground to explore and honor the Ocean.
Back in jewellery making
2014
As the business grew, and the first showroom was established in the glamorous Principality of Monaco, in 2014. With an outgrowing reputation following the rebranding of the company, London and Tokyo aware the next cities to welcomed Vitale 1913.
The return to the Principality of Monaco
THE NEW CENTURY, 2000s
Alberto Vitale (CEO of Vitale 1913), decided to move to Monaco in 1999 working in private banking and as a consultant. In 2008, following the death of his father, he took the reins of the business moving the company to The Principality of Monaco. The company went from a diamond trading company, to what would become a high jewelry brand that offers the best diamonds for investment and unique creations.
Vitale 1913 is now specialized in high-jewellery and trading of rare diamonds and exceptional precious stones. The company stayed thoughtful to its origin and kept the factory at Valenza, ensuring the highest quality for its unique know-how.
International market, gems and diamonds
The second part of the Century 1900
In the 1960s and 1970s, subsequent generations joined the family business, expanding it commercially first in southern Italy thanks to the Neapolitan origins of Alberto Vitale, and then around the world. Given the international travels of his son Licio, launched in parallel to the existing business, the international trade of precious stones, more particularly focused on exceptional diamonds.
A significant movement towards diamond’s extraction from approximately 25 million tons in the 60’s to beyond 40 million tons in the 70’s, transformed the company’s activities from jewellery production to the trading of precious stones. For more than 30 years the top clients list included jewellery brands as Bvlgari, Damiani, Chopard, Cartier as well as H.Stern and Gucci.
In the beginning of the 80’s Licio became a Monaco resident. While maintaining the family business in Italy, Licio started to gradually expand his own company, ‘Scorcione Felice di Licio Vitale’.
The second generation driving business growth
The marriage of the only child of Felice and Elise Scorcione, their daughter Bice (Valenza 1913-1980), to Alberto Vitale (Napoli 1895 – Valenza 1979) was in 1937, when the company operated under the name “Scorcione Felice di Alberto Vitale”. From that point onward, following the lead of Alberto Vitale (grand-father of the current Alberto Domenico Vitale), the family passed down its skills, passion and values to the next generations, experiencing a dazzling rise in their business by working for the greatest names in French and Italian jewellery, forming a solid reputation.
The Beginning
1913
The humbled start of Vitale 1913 takes on an exciting path dating back to the 1900’s in Valenza, where the young Felice Scorcione ( the great grandfather of the Alberto Domenico VITALE) was originally a carriage painter for the Sovereign family in Monaco on behalf of Turin-based company ‘FIAT’. After receiving a letter from his wife, encouraging him to move back to Valenza, he decided to leave from Monaco.
Decided to return and to embrace his passion for precious ornaments, Felice, his wife and son-in-law, opened their first workshop in the heart of the city marking the beginning of the family business. This story full of challenges survived the two World Wars and the rebirth of Italy, keeping the family’s passion unchanged, bringing amusements to the family and evolving the business within the future generations.
The new world capital of high jewellery, Valenza
1873
As history follows its route, and takes an unexpected turn, it brings us to the 1900s in Valenza, Italy, where the great goldsmith master Vincenzo MELCHIORRE had just arrived. This small Piedmontese town would be the crib to exciting changes transforming the world’s history of high jewellery.
Although his journey had begun long before that, travelling between Paris and Florence, capitals of art and jewellery at the time, it wasn’t until he fell in love with a local lady that History changed its course.
Vincenzo Melchiorre, settled in Valenza to be close to his beloved wife, and created a jewellery factory in 1873, which would become the most important in Italy. He was an influential man, and his expertise in the business transformed not only that town into the new capital of jewellery, but Vitale’s family history.
Vitale 1913 Family origine
18th & 19th Centuries
The Vitale family has its origin in the noble and opulent Royal House of Bourbons from Naples, who ruled Southern Italy and Sicily in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The family brought political stability to the city transforming it into a modernised, extravagant and elegant metropolis.
After losing control over the Kingdom, the Bourbon together with a Vitale family escaped to France.
The dynasty ascended to the French throne towards the middle of the sixteenth century. This was a family in the court that carried out its traditions through generations.
Valenza flourishing through Art and Jewellery
It is not always easy to understand how history unfolds and the ways it takes through time, or why certain activities, as art and jewellery, develop themselves in a given place and time. The birth of Valenza’s goldsmith activity was one of these incognitos; there was no raw materials at disposal, nor qualified workers or motive power, but regardless of all the challenges it unfolded itself beautifully.
Before it was known for the art of jewellery making, Valenza was a town dedicated to traditional agriculture. Under the influence of the French Revolution new intriguing ideas circulated in Italy.
In the first half of the 18th Century a few shops of local and small artisans began to decorate the city landscapes, bringing Valenza to take a subtle shift into goldsmith activity during the second half of the century. However, this new profession that flourished in Valenza evolved rather slowly. The know-how and expertise of the workers of the town help it to become the capital of jewellery making.
