The story of the Maison.

Birth of Feruccio, known as Jean Ratti, in Lombardy. The tenth of twelve children, his parents were landowners, tied to the rice fields of the Po plain, near Lake Garda. In this still-rural Northern Italy, one learns early the meaning of effort and the patience of the seasons. These two inheritances, the land and long time, would stay with Feruccio his whole life, and later infuse every gesture in the workshop.

The chocolate maker sends him to Paris. There Feruccio becomes a naturalised Frenchman and decides to set out on his own. Paris, at the dawn of the twentieth century, is the capital of taste and fine industry. Feruccio, now Jean, sees it as the place where his trade can become a house. He chooses to stop working for others, and to build his own.

Patrice Ratti, maternal grandfather of Arthur and Tom, continues the family business of confectionery machinery. Under Patrice Ratti, the company crosses the decades without breaking from its original trade. It is he who passes on to his grandsons a taste for things well made and the intact memory of a name.