Bespoke from Beretta

With firearms it’s typically either quantity or quality. With the former you have Kalashnikovs stamped out in the millions, with the latter there are the boutique makers who craft a half-dozen fine guns a year. This schism between Bren & Sten and Boss & Bosis is fundamental to the firearms industry.
Fabbrica D’Armi Pietro Beretta has made firearms for 500 years. The firm currently offers shotguns that range from the affordable yet unremarkable to those that are so expensive and fabulously crafted that they will be seen only in the hands of the most discerning and wealthiest collectors.
The Beretta catalog long has listed “premium” models such as the 687, the Giubileo, the DT10 Trident and the SO5 and SO6 that could be “customized” to a client’s tastes and requirements, but recently the company began offering three truly “bespoke” guns in the Imperiale Montecarlo, the SO10 and the Diana. In the spring of 2007 my wife and I visited Gardone, Val Trompia, to see why the world’s oldest and one of the largest sporting-arms manufacturers wanted to make a handful of guns that take years to build and cost a fortune.
The concept of making a genuinely bespoke gun is one that most firearms manufactures avoid, because the logistics of offering such guns are invariably complex and costly in both time and expense.

So I was keen to ask Jarno Antonelli, from Beretta’s advertising and marketing department and the man who would conduct our tour, why a manufacturer of machine pistols would feel the need to compete with boutique makers such as Bosis and Boss?
We met at Villa Beretta, the stone building attached to the Beretta factory in central Gardone that is recognizable to anyone familiar with the firm’s catalogs. From there we motored just five minutes south of town to a large, modern factory known as Beretta Due. It is in this second Beretta facility that artisans assemble the premium-model shotguns such as the SO and DT10 Trident series and customize them for the international clay shooting fraternity. Anyone can visit this factory to have his competition gun fitted. It is here, too, that one of 15 engravers can customize the premium model of your choice.
Initially, it was unclear why I had been brought here, as my remit was to write about “best” guns only, but Antonelli had insisted. Afterward I realized why: He had wanted me to understand the quantum quality difference between the premium guns made at Beretta Due and those in the bespoke atelier atop Beretta Uno, or the number-one factory.
We drove back to Beretta Uno, climbed several flights of stairs and entered the bespoke-gun workshop. It was a room about 40 x 25 feet with windows on three sides. A peak through the half-drawn Venetian blinds revealed the roof of the Uno factory, beyond which were the red-tile roofs of the workers’ apartments and then the Mella River and the surrounding mountains. It was a view worthy of a playboy’s aerie. Yet this was no place of leisure.
On the factory floor below, machines identical to the rogue automaton from the beginning of Robocop blasted out soldiers’ sidearms, while high above in the atelier, suffused with light, a couple of artisans and their young apprentices worked metal with hand tools in the time-honored fashion. Despite the absence of heavy machinery, in the shop it was all business. Every man had a bench, with his tools serried like soldiers and some small piece of a bespoke gun swaddled in cloth and held tightly in a vise. Each bench was equipped with a work lamp on a crane arm, and fluorescent tubes covered the ceiling. Perhaps because of all of the light, the overall feel of the place was closer to a meticulously maintained laboratory than any gunworks.
Two master gunmakers, Bortolo Gitti and Claudio Fioretti, and their apprentices are responsible for everything. Gitti is in his early 60s. He is a proud man of princely bearing and serious mien. Fioretti, in his early 40s, has the long dark hair and easy smile of a celebrity bicycle racer or soccer star. Both came to Beretta from Luigi Franchi, where they built the Imperiale Montecarlo Extra. This was a top-of-the-line best side-by-side with numerous English influences. It was a sidelock gun with Holland & Holland locks, and examples I have seen had double triggers and straight-hand stocks extending to beaded fences.
You won’t find the name Franchi in older references to Italian gunmaking. The firm was never part of the 19th Century Emilia-Romagna fine-gun trade but, like so many gunmakers in Brescia, forged its own destiny during the 20th Century. Franchi began building guns in 1868, but the resurgence in really fine guns dates back only to the 1960s and ’70s when spiraling inflation and declining quality in Europe’s traditional fine-gun centers encouraged the firm and its regional competitors to court the international cognoscenti.
In 1996 Beretta acquired Franchi, and shortly afterward Gitti and Fioretti migrated with the name and continued building the Imperiale Montecarlo Extra, simply dropping the “Extra.”
In his compendious The World of Beretta, An International Legend, R.L. Wilson says that Franchi once “counted Ernest Hemingway amongst its admiring owners.” This is hardly surprising, as Hemingway was something of an Anglophile and the Franchi Imperiale Montecarlo Extra had more in common with a Hussey Imperial or a Holland & Holland Royal from the 1920s and ’30s than any post-modern Italian shotgun.
The new Beretta Imperiale Montecarlo is, as one might expect, similar to its Franchi forefather—a traditional side-by-side with Holland & Holland-type locks—and it is truly a bespoke gun. The finished example I saw in Gardone featured restrained tiny “English” scroll engraving, which covered every surface including the furniture. The fence beads and tumbler pivot as well as the screw heads and a ribbon separating the bar from the action had been left highly polished for emphasis. In contrast the business end of the toplever was pierced and formed into a medieval mythic beast. The overall effect was that of an Extra Lusso Churchill Premier with an Italian flourish.
Obviously, more than any single element, it is the engraving that makes a bespoke gun personal, and the people at Beretta emphasize that the engraving styles available on their bespoke guns are limited only by one’s imagination. Also making the Imperiale Montecarlo unique is that the barrel steel used is specially made to Beretta specifications, and construction is demibloc versus the conventional monobloc.
The second bespoke Beretta I saw in Gardone was the SO10, which is directly descended from a series of guns with the “S” prefix, for “Sovrapposto”—literally “superposed” in Italian. The first of these was built on Beretta patents from 1934 and appeared in Beretta catalogs of the 1930s as the “Mod. S. 01—Super Caccia.” Designed by longtime Beretta worker Tullio Marengoni, the “Sovrapposto Zero One” would be the first of a series of Beretta over/unders to enjoy iconic status.
In Italy Marengoni stands with Hugo Schmeisser for his seminal work on submachine-gun design, but similarities with John Moses Browning are altogether more striking. According to his granddaughter, Marengoni “designed all the pistols, semiautomatic and automatic guns, and shotguns made by Beretta from circa 1918 through 1957.” Like Browning’s Superposed, his Sovrapposto was a resounding success, resonating with wingshots worldwide.
A Kersten-type fastener bolted the barrels to the action face. It was a simple and not inelegant solution to an over/under that would have to be made relatively inexpensively if it were to have broad market appeal. High action walls prevented lateral movement, added to the strength and helped create an aesthetic that would be refined but never abandoned through 10 successive iterations. The latest, the SO10 (somewhere down the line the “0” became an “O”) offers “a new aesthetic with respect for the Beretta tradition,” according to one company executive.
With the new gun, no expense has been spared, and six separate bolts—hand-fitted by Gitti and Fioretti—now fasten the gun. The locks can be removed by two hidden keys, reminiscent of Joseph Lang’s hand-detachable locks. Some appreciation of the quality of the SO10 can be had from the fact that an un-engraved mirror finish is offered. On less-expensive guns engraving often beards poor polishing.
My own preferred finish would be the birds, dogs and ornamental motifs created by Mario Terzi and featured on the SO10 in the Beretta catalog. It’s significant that a company with its own 15-person engraving crew should commission one of Italy’s great independent engravers when ornamentation is required for a very best gun. By combining mythic figures and rococo ribbons with realistic game scenes against what at first appears to be a stippled background but is actually tiny tight scroll, Terzi has redefined stylized engraving on post-modern Italian shotguns. My guess is that it will be widely copied.
The third and final bespoke Beretta I saw was a hammergun, or Doppietta di lusso a cani esterni (literally “luxury side-by-side with external [cocking] dogs.” It is known as the Diana, and it takes all of three days to hand file a single “dog” from the solid. Since acquiring Uberti, the reproduction-six-gun maker, Beretta now offers Western-style revolvers. Wouldn’t it be the ultimate cowboy collector item to have a Diana hammergun and a Beretta wheel gun, both engraved identically with Western scroll in the style of Nimschke or Ulrich and cased together?
Until recently, elements of Beretta’s previous attempt at a bespoke gun, the SO9, were contracted out to Famars di Abbiatico and Salvinelli. I asked Jarno Antonelli about this. “The SO9 shotgun, not anymore in production since 2001, was totally made by Beretta, except for some parts that were made in cooperation with FAMARS,” Antonelli said. “Now the cooperation with this company is ended, as the new Premium gun [SO10] is completely made by Beretta. It is common to work together with the other companies of the valley.”
I eventually asked Antonelli why a firm that makes handguns for the US Army needs a bespoke-gun atelier. Isn’t it, after all, like Coors or Bud offering a microbrew? “For Beretta it is essential to keep alive the relationship between the two,” he said. “By highlighting quality and attention to detail, we create a standard to which all of the guns must live up to. Without this quality, the standard guns can’t survive. After all, they are carrying the Beretta name.”
Bespoke Berettas are not for the faint of heart or shallow of pocket. According to Peter Horn, of New York’s Beretta Gallery, “Stock Beretta over/unders run from about $2,500 to $7,000. Special guns done just for the Galleries run from $4,500 to $8,500. Premium guns start with the Giubileo at about $13,750 and go up to special-order SO10 EELLs, which run from $96,500 to $300,000.” The Imperiale Montecarlo starts at $100,000, and the Diana begins at $130,000.
The Val Trompia is home to 100 companies that offer shotguns that range from the prosaic to the unparalleled. This spread of quality undoubtedly will contribute to the region’s continued success. The Imperiale Montecarlo, the SO10 EELL and the Diana compete with the very best of them and ensure not only that Beretta has a place at the table of fine gunmakers but also that the firm shall succeed if Gardone’s fame becomes increasingly dependent on best guns.

Author’s Note: For more information on Beretta’s bespoke guns, contact Beretta USA, 800-237-3882; www.berettausa.com.

Douglas Tate is an Editor at Large for Shooting Sportsman.

Autumn of the Pariarch

At the recent Safari Club International Convention, in Reno, Beretta unveiled a pair of 20-gauge SO10 EELL over/unders that had been built to commemorate the 70th birthday of company patriarch Ugo Gussalli Beretta. Representing the 14th generation of the family of gunmakers, Signior Beretta was on hand to discuss the guns.
My first question concerned the engraving. Featuring Beretta’s favorite subjects, including his beloved setters, Olga and Lola, and his favorite gamebirds, the woodcock and pheasant, the engraving had been done by Englishman Ken Hunt. I knew Hunt had been the only non-Italian featured in Mario Abbiatico’s treatise Modern Italian Engraving, but still I wondered why a Brit had been chosen when so much great native talent was available in Gardone. “It is something I didn’t have,” Beretta said, “and Ken developed this technology [applying multi-colored gold]. For me, technology is very important.”
When I asked why a company best known for manufacturing military hardware had decided to break into the best-gun market and compete with the likes of Purdey and Holland & Holland, the answer was the same: “Technology,” Beretta said. “With handmade guns such as the Montecarlo, we can never make more than 10 guns a year, because very few craftsmen are capable of the finest work, but the new technology permits larger numbers of guns to be made to the finest standards.” He went on to explain that a gun like the SO10 matches the best craft skill and the best technology in order to increase production—although still only about 50 SO guns are made per year. He also mentioned that Beretta did not suddenly decide to enter the bespoke-gun market, as premium products have been produced by the company since it was founded. Evidence of this is the top-quality flintlocks, wheellocks and percussion-type muzzleloaders displayed in the Beretta museum. The company is in the premium-gun business because it is continuing its tradition.
But if Signior Beretta’s celebratory guns are marvels of modern technology, the case built to contain them is pure arts & crafts. Cleverly constructed to contain the two guns beneath glass, the showcase desk features the liberty-style Villa Beretta with fantasy Palladian colonnaded wings. The incongruity of the architectural styles was masterfully synthesized by English casemaker David Linley. Lord Linley is the son of Princess Margaret and Viscount Linley and is 13th in line for the British throne.
These high-tech guns with exquisite engraving and case represent a marriage between the best of old and new and should bring lasting pleasure during the autumnal years of Beretta’s patriarch. —D.T.