The Ruffatti Family
Our story begins in Padova, Italy, the ancient city in the Venetian area that has been home to organbuilders since the middle ages. By the 1700s, a unique school of organbuilding had emerged in Venice, founded by Pietro Nacchini and continued by Gaetano Callido and other famous successors. The unique characteristics of this organbuilding school form the basis of the Ruffatti tradition.
The Basilica of St. Anthony, Padova
Padova’s “Prato della Valle”
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In 1940, three brothers, Alessio, Antonio, and Giuseppe Ruffatti, founded the firm of “Famiglia Artigiana Fratelli Ruffatti” — Ruffatti Brothers, Family of Artisans — the full and original name of the company, which remains unchanged today. Fratelli Ruffatti rapidly gained an excellent reputation and produced hundreds of instruments within just a few years.
Since its founding, the firm has expanded its market area, manufacturing prestigious instruments for Northern Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, and Australia. In a very demanding North American market, they contracted and installed more than fifty instruments of large and medium size, the most of any European firm. For Italy alone, Ruffatti has manufactured more than five hundred instruments. |
Fratelli Ruffatti was among the first organbuilders in Italy when, in the early 1960s, it began building new mechanical action instruments. This was at a time when, in Italy as in other countries, such a choice was seen as bizarre and extremist. We continue to manufacture and perfect mechanical action organs to this day, as well as electric action instruments.
