About
One name, one bench .
Who is behind every Corvo frame, and why he still makes them one at a time.
Our story
From apprentice to a workshop of his own
I learned the trade in Italy, at a workshop in Milan that built road frames for amateur teams. I stayed eight years, brazing tubes every day without a single one carrying my name. In 2013 I came back to Porto and opened Corvo, in a garage in Massarelos that is still the workshop today.
The idea was never to grow. A well-brazed steel frame lasts forty years and can be repaired whenever it needs to be: that is not what a factory sells. I would rather measure each person, cut each tube by hand and put my name behind what leaves the bench, even if that means only fifty frames a year.
These days I work with Inês, who does the painting and writes to whoever is on the waiting list. There are two of us, there is one bench, and that is why the list exists: there is no way to make more frames without making them worse.
12
Years brazing frames
50
Frames a year
2
People in the workshop
Tiago Rocha and Inês Barbosa
Tiago founded Corvo in 2013, after eight years at a frame workshop in Milan. Inês has handled paint and the waiting list since 2019.
Why by hand
What Corvo is not.
No catalogue sizes
Every frame is measured for one person and cut to fit them. There is no S, M or L waiting for whoever comes closest.
Steel, not carbon
A brazed joint can be heated and remade. A bonded joint, once it fails, means buying another frame.
One bench, not a line
There is no batch production and no afternoon shift. The waiting list exists because there is only one pair of hands filing each tube.
Built to last
The oldest frame to leave here is twelve years old and still goes out every Sunday. That is the aim, not this year’s fashion.