A semolina carrier becomes a pasta maker.

Setaro is one of the last family pasta makers in Torre Annunziata, the town on the Bay of Naples, at the foot of Vesuvius, that Italian Wikipedia says was once called the “capital of the arte bianca” — the white art of milling and pasta-making. Italian Wikipedia, citing a local history, says the town’s output peaked between the two world wars, with more than sixty mills and pasta factories, and that at the end of the 19th century pasta-making employed some 60% of its workforce. Citing Il Giornale in 2017, it names two brands still in business among the best known: Voiello and Setaro.

The company dates its start to 1939. Its founder, Nunziato Setaro, had worked in the trade around the pasta makers before he became one: the company describes him as a semolina carrier, and the food site Sud Food reported in 2020 that he had distributed flour and other raw materials to local pasta factories. In 1939 he took over a pasta works in the town’s historic centre. The company’s own line for the moment is that it all began “when the roofs and pavements of Torre Annunziata were covered with white sheets of pasta,” a reference to the open-air drying the town was known for.

The building is part of the story. The company says it dates from the 19th century and is built of lava stone; the food site Eroi del Gusto, writing ahead of the firm’s 80th anniversary in 2019, described an early-19th-century building designed for pasta-making, with volcanic-stone walls some 80 centimetres thick. The company also says mills have stood in the area since the 1500s; Italian Wikipedia records that the Sarno river was canalised at the end of the 16th century to power the town’s mills.

Bronze dies, old presses and slow drying.

Setaro presents itself as a maker that has kept its methods rather than scaled them. The company says it still uses a Braibanti press fitted with bronze dies that has been in the factory since 1939; Eroi del Gusto reported in 2019 that the firm works with two machines dating from the early 20th century, producing about 200 kilograms an hour. The company makes its pasta from durum-wheat semolina and spring water.

Drying is the other half of the method. The company says it dries its pasta in cells using what it calls the “Cirillo method,” designed to reproduce the sun and wind of the old open-air drying; Eroi del Gusto put drying times at between 24 and 120 hours depending on the shape. The company says it uses only Italian durum wheat, chosen by Vincenzo Setaro, and that its pasta is packed by hand, one pack at a time. Eroi del Gusto counted more than 100 shapes in the range and said the pasta was sold mainly through selected delicatessens and wine bars rather than through large supermarkets.

The business remains in the family. Press coverage around the 2019 anniversary described the founder’s grandsons — the brothers Vincenzo, Nunziato and Giovanni Setaro — as the third generation in charge, and the company marked 80 years with an event on 2 June 2019. The company’s own site speaks of four generations, and Sud Food reported in 2020 that Vincenzo’s daughter, Elena Setaro, had designed one of the newer shapes, called Splendenti. The company trades as Pastificio F.lli Setaro — the “brothers” of the name. In May 2025 the local news site Torresette reported that the food guide TasteAtlas had placed Setaro among the twenty best pastas in the world in its awards.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group all make pasta, and all of them come from Italy: Granoro, Pastificio dei Campi, Di Martino, Setaro, Benedetto Cavalieri, Agnesi and Giovanni Rana. Italian pasta makers in general sit at many different points in the trade, from small family workshops that still carry a founder’s surname to names that now belong to much larger food groups, and the same word, pasta, covers both dried shapes made from durum wheat semolina and fresh or filled pasta sold from the chiller.

A pasta brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single shape than by a pack, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its factory or grown far beyond the town where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its pasta is actually made and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its pasta is made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Five marks in eighty years.

Setaro is unusual among small pasta makers in publishing its own logo history. On a page devoted to the town’s arte bianca, the company shows five marks in sequence: the first tag, used in the 1950s; a hand-drawn label used from the 1950s to the 1970s; a mark introduced in the 1970s and used from then on; a mark created in the 2000s for new lines; and another mark from the 2000s that it says is still in use today. The company does not describe the colours or lettering of those marks, so the palette here is our own reading of its setting rather than a documented scheme.

The company’s own history pages return to the same elements: the lava-stone building, the 1939 press, the town’s history of drying pasta in the open air and a family name carried by three brothers.

For a design guide, Setaro shows how a small family maker can treat its own sequence of labels as part of its heritage, from a hand-drawn mid-century label to the marks used today. Compare Voiello, the other historic Torre Annunziata name, and Garofalo, the Gragnano maker licensed in the 18th century. For this guide we use a lava-stone grey, a durum gold and a drying-sheet white with an old-style serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Setaro’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.