Andy Wolf stands for unique glasses, handcrafted in Hartberg, Austria. It was founded by the three friends Andreas (Andy), Wolfgang (Wolf) and Katharina to produce classic and contemporary frames for individuals. In 2006, the three of them sat down to enjoy a meal of meat and fish from local meadows and waters, market-fresh vegetables and good Austrian wine from the kind of vintner you know personally.

There was one question at that table:
Why aren’t glasses made in such a personal, natural and familiar fashion?

Every part of an Andy Wolf frame undergoes rigorous quality control. After the frame is finally assembled, they check for all irregularities during our process, and every part of a frame is subject to scrutiny.

“While we love our state-of-the-art computer-driven machines and their mechanical perception, it’s still the five senses of a valued Andy Wolf employee that would notice any flaws.”

Andy Wolf owns their entire process from the initial design, to shaping acetate blocks into frames, until they land at Sphere. Once the middle part and temples have been shaped, the frames go through several stages of cleaning, grinding and polishing to guarantee maximum comfort when worn.

Every Andy Wolf model has its own origin, be it as a sketch on a napkin or on graph paper. What unites them is the fact that each drawing or sketch is entered into a digital CAD system, where it is fine-tuned to serve as the base for starting the production process.

High-quality acetate sourced from an Italian factory or first-rate metal are the building blocks for every Andy Wolf frame. Most of them are made from sustainably produced acetate – a material obtained from hardened cotton flocks, that lends itself to a variety of treatments and shapes. They use 6-8 mm thick plates of it that enables them to mill the middle part of a frame out of a single piece.

Of course they could use thinner acetate plates to produce a pair of glasses, but in their opinion, it just wouldn’t be an Andy Wolf frame then.

Originally published at andy-wolf.com.