The Italian Renaissance
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Kevin Godbee - Mar 3, 2014
- 13 min read
Alan Schwartz
Because of the Italian Renaissance of the pipe is in its full, PipeSMOKE made a pilgrimage to Italy. We started in Rome and continued a peregrination around the country northward to visit the industry saints or sinners (depending on whom you ask), and hand carvers in smaller workshops, as well as large factories. But, with so many pipe manufacturers and an enormous range of stylistic variations, we decided to acquaint or readers with the pipe culture of Italy and look at the "schools" of pipe making. Rather than trying to list everyone or trying to establish hierarchies we tried to find some unifying ideas to help understand this recent phenomena. Because it is nature and nurture in Italy to argue ones opinion vehemently and passionately, but without personal animosity, we must emphasize that the ideas expressed below are those of the individuals interviewed and not necessarily those of this magazine.
ROME: Shopping for Style and Culture
Fincato is a pipeshop dating to 1932, and located in the old Roman center near the eternal Pantheon and the ephemeral government offices. Here, Fauso Fincato holds court:: this is his empire. The shop’s street level features well-stocked display counters and wall racks with all the standard brands of tobacco and pipe. Up a flight of steps is a lounge-like showroom and museum outfitted with arm-chairs, couches, coffee, magazines, and tobacco humidors for a fill. Here, customers who drop by for a smoke, a chat, a sample, or a purchase find Fincato’s best offering – his personal attention.
A universally acknowledged spokesman for the Italian pipe world and publisher of the distinguished magazine, SMOKING, this suave, silver-haired gentleman has a style that would serve well in the diplomatic corps – discreet and direct, but with an agenda. He says, for example, that Italian pipe smokers mostly don’t buy what is commonly thought of as an “Italian” pipe – a large, freehand, fancy shape with baroque form or rococo ornamentation. What they like are the classics – standard. shapes that are time-honored but modified by the pipemaker’s artistic sensibility “As with great big cigars, huge pipes in everyday use are moments of exhibitionism. The pipe will remain, as it always has, classic. It promotes the image of elegance and refinement,” Fincato explains as he lights up a well- used Savinelli Golden Jubilee with a billiard bowl, a bit taller but slightly narrower than the sandblasted, thinner-shanked Dunhill billiard I am carrying with me.
We admire the Savinelli and the Dunhill, in the universal show-and-tell pipe lovers use to get acquainted, along with a Peterson billiard with silver mount and spigot that I withdraw from my pocket. “I can see that you like the classics too,” Fincato remarks. “Look at the perfect form, the balance between bowl, shank, and mouthpiece. This Savinelli is the classic Italian billiard; yours are the traditional English or Irish versions,” he points out.
In fact, most of the pipes Fincato displays in his upstairs area are classic and elegant, clearly, at home in a polished, urbane setting. “A pipe is something to carry in the pocket, part of the equipment of a gentleman. Novelty pipes sensa anima (without spirit) don’t create their own future, but all of these classics do,” Fincato opines. Creating the future is part of what the Italian pipe culture is about, but to do so it stands on the shoulders of the past.
This day, we are Fincato’s luncheon guests at the Circolo della Pipa (Circle of the Pipe), housed in a 15th century villa that belonged to a Vatican official, and probably was occupied by the painter known as “Raphael” (Raffaello Santi, 1483-1520). The Circolo, self designated as "associazione culturale," a pipe club composed of the Roman noblesse oblige, uses this elegant little villa, high up on one of the city’s seven hills, as a luncheon and dinner club, and as a gathering place for the members to meet for a convivial smoke, drink, card game, or chat.
A preference for the pipe, fine wines, and gourmet food unites Circolo members, and they discuss their passions over a meal, as a preamble to smoking (it is considered brittafigura – bad form – to smoke while others eat). A wide range of topics are discussed and argued: Is Ascorti the best designer of the Como school? Is it true that Radice is his cousin? Does Savinelli still uphold the old standards? Is Brebbia shifting away from classicism? Can you really classify the pipe carvers of Pesaro as a school with Giancarlo Guidi (Ser Jacopo) as their leader? What about Bruto Sordini (Don Carlos)? Are his pipes successful in the U.S.A.? Isn’t Franco Rossi (11 Ceppo) a true classicist? Do Americans still like Alberto Montini’s Mastro de Paja? Is Ardor well known in the States? Besides Aldo Velani and Thomas Cristiano, are there many brands of Italian pipes exported to America but hardly known in Italy? A lot of pipe knowledge here, and boundless curiosity.
After the meal, fine leather pouches emerge from pockets or the small leather handbags so many Italian men carry, and are passed around for approval or sampling. Treasured pipes surface and are examined. The air is filled with fragrant aromas of mostly natural English-style mixtures and Virginias, and a few of the lighter Dutch and Danish cavendish blends. A bond is formed through the act of dining and smoking together in this unabashedly men’s world of pipes, good food and drink, and fragrant coffee.
Back in everyday Rome, we visit the shop and workshop of Becker and Musico, just around the corner from the Trevi Fountain (as in “Three Coins in the one of the most densely tourist packed areas in Rome. Here, Paolo Becker, the son of the late famed pipemaker Federico (Fritz) Becker, and Massimo Musico work at making and repairing pipes. For pipe lovers it’s a respite from the outside world, again with comfortable seating, magazines, tobacco samples, and glorious pipes. Massimo is known as one of the best restorer/ repairmen in Rome, and even performed “emergency” surgery on a damaged pipe in my travel pack.
Becker’s work created a large following in the U.S. during the 1970s and ’80s for large freehand shapes, mostly with a rusticated finish, and rare, perfectly grained, smooth pipes. These days Becker still carves the freehands but is emphasizing a more classic line of medium-sized pipes with a British look and an Italian flair. “With so many younger professional men getting interested in pipes,” he says, “most of my sales are [pipes] in the medium-size range and are intended for daily use, not for collecting."
A few streets away, Augusto Ain the Wuof. About herrascenzo’s spartan shop, Regali Novelli, has the largest selection of Castello pipes this side of anywhere. And so it should, because Parascenzo is the designated distributor of Castello. Here the pipes are larger, more freehand than we’ve seen at the other shops and are “More for the Americans and Germans,” Parascenzo tells us. This street-level store is built for speed, not comfort, a far cry from the cultivated and leisurely connoisseurship promoted by Fincato or Becker & Musico. Pipe culture is somewhere else, but the Castello selection here is fabulous. Choice reigns, not elegance.
But Rome is for buying: the real “schools” of artisans, their workshops, and the larger factories are elsewhere.
Pesaro:
Northeast of Rome, in an Adriatic beach resort and shipping port named Pesaro, Giancarlo Guidi of Ser Jacopo, a master pipemaker generally regarded as the chief architect of the Pesaro style or “school,” shows us around his laboratorio (workshop) and offers a cogent explanation of the different schools. “Pesaro is artisan,” he says. “We all started by ourselves or in small groups of two or three to make pipes 20 to 30 years ago. We had only a few machines for drilling and polishing, but did all the cutting and shaping by hand, or at most with a lathe to turn the pipe while we shaped it with tools.
“Milan and Varese, on the other hand, had the industrial tradition of the north of Bruto Sordini of Don Carlos Italy,” he continues. “You can trace the anima (soul, spirit) of Brebbia and Savinelli back to the great Fratelli Rossi factory near Varese. They made up to 50,000 pipes a day at the beginning of the century. That’s 12 million pipes a year from one factory! When Buzzi (Brebbia) and Savinelli started together, and then split up, that was their tradition. To this day the factory concept drives both of their thinking and shows in their classical shapes, which I think are the best in the world. Even though they do make some very fine hand-carved pipes, they start conceptually with what can be made by machine and go on from there. The pipemakers around Gavirate-Ardor, Talamona, and others, are in the Savinelli-Brebbia orbit.”
“What about Castello?” we ask, intrigued by Guidi’s opinions and urging him to continue.
"Castello started the new Italian pipe. When Carlo Scotti began the company right after World War 11, his concept was to make radical innovations on standard forms and to make only the highest quality [product] for a small market of connoisseurs who could afford to pay the price. He used a very basic machine to cut the rough forms for consistent shapes, and then completed all the rest by hand. Great pipes, beautiful shapes. Of course there were also freehands, but only a small percentage. Ascorti and Radice originally worked for Castello, and when they went out on their own they carried out a similar idea: variations on classical themes, as seen in machined pipes. For that kind of artisan work, I think that Roberto Ascorti is one of the best pipernakers in the world today.”
Asked about the difference between the northern schools and Pesaro, Guidi responds, “We started as self-taught artisans, who then learned from each other. Some had worked in the northern factories, others spent time in Livorno with Cesare Barontini (a major supplier of raw briar for the Italian pipernakers and a large scale contract manufacturer of pipes to the world market.) I was self taught. As a university student of art and design, I started to make my own pipes and then, because there was no work in my field, decided to do that for a living. The only machines I had were a saw, a lathe, and a sander. And that’s all I have now, although more of the same.”
Guidi’s first company wasn’t Ser Jacopo; it was Mastro de Paja, which he started in 1970. In 1982, Guidi left Mastro to his partners and started Ser Jacobo, where he continued to make large and over-sized “organic” shapes determined by the grain of the wood, and implemented elaborate ornamentation at the joint between the wooden shank and the Lucite stem. “In my exploratory phase with Mastro and then in the new company, I made sculpture, not pipes that were comfortable and smokeable. Then I returned to the classics, as a type of maturity. I search for thematic material in folklore, art history, and pipe traditions,” Guidi explains.
One of the major accomplishments of Giancarlo Guidi is indirect: whether in the earlier phases of his career or the most recent, most of the Pesaro pipernakers have come under his influence. Either they worked for him or learned from him as apprentices. For example, Bruto Sordini originally studied medicine but was entranced by pipernaking, and learned the basics from a local carver in his native town of Cagli, in the mountains an hour west of Pesaro. Guidi supplied briar and the two became friends. Then Guidi asked Sordini to join him when he started Ser Jacopo in 1982. Since 1988, Sordini has made his own Don Carlos pipe in a purpose-built workshop in Cagli.
With a spectacular view of the mountains through the huge windows that flood his workshop with light, and opera blasting on his stereo, Sordini, his wife Rosaria, and one assistant make some of the finest examples of large freehand classics we’ve seen from the Pesaro school. Guidi’s influence is evident in the clean lines and balanced proportions, with surprising angles and curves, although the Don Carlos pipes are generally larger than his mentor’s. Sordini also likes to add substantial ornamentation to the mouthpiece/bowl joint, like Guidi. Sordini’s pre-pipe medical studies show too, with his scientific background leading him to invent and patent a carefully researched water filtration and moisture removal system in his “Hydra” pipe. His early apprenticeship with the local craftsman, along with the rugged local geography, also influence the outdoor character of his carving.
A more subtle Guidi influence is on Il Ceppo. According to Franco Rossi, who heads the company now, his sister and co-worker Nadia founded the company with her husband, master carver Georgio Imperatori, now retired. Imperatori worked with Guidi in the early days and started Il Ceppo when Guidi started Mastro. Somewhat younger, Franco Rossi started at Mastro after Guidi had gone on to form Ser Jacopo, and learned the Guidi style of pipemaking, the style Mastro still uses today. Later, Rossi joined Imperatori at Il Ceppo, and eventually took over.
Rossi, an amiable man who instantly makes you feel that you’ve known him forever, has a passion for classics, all hand-turned, but with differences in proportion from the traditional shapes. An unusually wide shank will flow from a narrow bowl, or vice versa. Innovative silver bands adorn the shanks, and the mouthpieces are jewel-perfect in size and proportion. “The classical mode comes from Imperatori,” Rossi says, “but the freehands have the flavor of Montini’s Mastro, courtesy of Guidi."
The next stop on our journey is Mastro de Paja, where Alberto Montini shows us his immaculate factory, where five micromanaged pipernakers are kept busy. “Mastro de Paja is still producing the freehand style pipes the company pioneered in the early days, except that the sizes are a bit smaller," Montini tells us. One mandated innovation here is that the finishers work on different shapes randomly sorted to keep their attention fresh and to avoid the numbing repetition of looking at the same pipes all day long. Montini, a keen observer of business trends, notes that he too is moving toward moderate sized classics in his 1998/99 collections. “The younger men want smaller, less obvious pipes,” he says, “and we want the younger men as customers. This is a market-driven business.”
Whether the members of the Pesaro school acknowledge or deny it, their history echoes Giancarlo Guidi’s own. All of them run small artisan workshops that they started, with difficulty, when they decided to go it alone, and all use limited machinery. All hire workers who can carry out any phase of pipernaking, some of whom, in fact, split their time among the different makers’ workshops, as the season and production schedules demand. All, moreover, bring a high degree of similarity in method and style to their work, with the distinct differences that personality dictates.
The Pesaro pipernakers have one other thing in common: they all have a prominently displayed picture of the world-renowned tenor Luciano Pavarotti smoking one of their pipes. A passionate pipe smoker, Pavarotti has a home nearby on the Adriatic shore, and homage paid to him with a gift of a specimen briar from one of the pipe maestros begets a photo posed with that pipe. And we are assured that Pavarotti smokes them all.
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TO BE CONTINUED: Join PipeSMOKE next issue for the second part of our Italian pipe journey! We travel north to Milan, Cantu, Cucciago, Varese, Lake Como, and Lake Maggiore, with visits to Savinelli, Ascorti, Radice, Castello, and Brebbia. Learn which major pipe maker disagrees with Giancarlo Guidi! Visit Savinelli’s famous shop! Drive Italian-style on the Autostrada! Eat pizza near the Duomo! Feel your eyes burn in Milan’s smog! Discover how Brebbia generates its own factory electricity! Decide if the Italian-French opposition in WW II was caused by the closing of Fratelli Rossi! Learn the truth about the Savinelli-Brebbia rivalry. Watch Ascorti make a pipe! Meet Alberto Paronelli, keeper of the flame in the most unusual pipe museum in the world! Stay tuned, and don’t touch that dial! |
PipeSMOKE – Winter 98/99
Written by Kevin Godbee
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 636. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Barry Kane. Barry started smoking a pipe in 1961 when he was 14-years old. Back then it seemed like everybody smoked, and you could buy pipes and tobacco just about anywhere. Barry is a true old-school pipe smoker, sticking to just one blend. See if you can guess which one before listening. At the top of the show Brian will give his take on Scandinavian Tobacco Group’s purchase of Mac Baren and Sutliff Tobacco and their announcement that they will be shut down.
There’s a pipe in my collection that I cannot bring myself to smoke, though I’ve had it for more years than I care to recall. It’s old, or shall I say, well experienced; that experience, that oldness came to it long before it was in my possession. The pipe is an old Comoy’s Grand Slam from the 1940s. The shape (#93), a slightly canted, stack billiard (sometimes referred to as a Belgian) is right up my alley, and it’s a beautiful example of it. It came to me with some wear and tear; nothing unusual for an old pipe, but more the signs of one that has been well loved, smoked a lot, treated as a favorite tool, cherished, in a sense, by frequent use. It’s the pipe equivalent of a vintage car that’s been driven a lot, enjoyed fully and maintained adequately, rather than one kept in a spotless garage, dusted and detailed weekly, brought out only for leisurely Sunday drives, or to be ogled behind the ropes at the next Concours d’Elegance. When it arrived, those uncounted years ago, it wanted a little restoration. Nothing dramatic needed to be done to it, but the stem was oxidized, the finish a little dingy. The cake was even and fairly thin, and the airway was relatively clean, both signs that its previous owner cared for it, but the bowl’s surface was a little drab and dull. It took little effort to reveal its beauty, to show the lovely contrasted stain and interesting grain beneath the old wax. I often think I should do before and after photos of pipes that I work on, but those thoughts always come after the work’s been done. This one would have been a great illustration of how years of handling that can sometimes make a pipe more beautiful, can other times make it just look grungy. Once I’d cleaned up the externals, it was time to address the inside bits. I approach this a little bassackwards, I realize. It would be more sensible to take care of the inside before addressing the outside, but it’s how I roll. If an old pipe isn’t pretty to look at, it’s unlikely that I’ll care much about it, and cleaning is usually the hardest part, or at least the most boring part of any restoration for me. Alcohol and pipe cleaners. Lots of pipe cleaners. That’s why I leave it for last. Sometimes, I’ll even give a pipe a test smoke before a deep cleaning, just for a point of reference. I gave it a sniff to get an idea of what I was up against, and it stopped me cold. There in that bowl was an aroma that I had not smelled in decades. My head was instantly filled with memories of being in the back room of a fabled Berkeley tobacconist’s shop where I stumbled upon a few jars of long discontinued blends. One of them, a blend called Forty and Eight, had the most engaging and unusual scent of any tobacco I’d stuck my schnoz into. It was sweet, but not in a candy store way. There were none of the usual vanilla, cherry, berry or anise notes of typical aromatics, nothing that could be compared to aftershave or deodorant soap, but something almost musky, a little earthy, something exotic. The shop’s owner couldn’t tell me what was in it, how, or where it had been produced. The old blend had been retired before he’d bought the place. The printed catalogue gave no clues, either, other than being overprinted with the word “DISCONTINUED” in bold, rubber-stamp type. (And, I don’t recall it as being “highly aromatic” as the description indicates.) There was still quite a bit in the jar. Being, at that point, an intrepid explorer of all kinds of tobaccos, whether I thought I’d like them or not, I had to give it a try. It was burly based, but also comprised a good measure of virginia leaf, and maybe some other varieties; I didn’t have enough experience at the time to really pick it apart. But, that aroma was unlike anything I’d experienced before or since. It was something now completely lost to time. Until it wasn’t. Memories are powerful things, and there is no sense more tightly bound to memory than our sense of smell. One whiff was all it took to carry me back in time, conjuring a vivid recollection of something long submerged in the inky depths of a subconscious mind. Look, I know as well as anyone that pipes are meant to be smoked, and that many feel it almost sacrilegious to have a pipe and not set it to its intended task. In this case, I simply can’t. I won’t. Ever. Rationally, I am fairly certain this pipe would probably be a great smoke. It was too well loved by its previous caretaker to be anything less than that. My choice not to smoke it is an emotional one, not something rational. Of the thousands of pipes that have passed through my hands over the years, this is the only one to create such a singular and vivid, almost Proustian recollection of temps perdu, of lost time. It revivified a long dormant memory that is mine, and mine alone, and that’s enough. I keep it in a drawer with other old English pipes. In some ways, it’s nothing special, just a nice old pipe. I don’t lavish it with any particular care that arguably befits the hidden treasure that it holds. It’s not in a special box, or displayed preciously in a glass cabinet. Every once in a while, I take it out, point my nose bowlwards, and every time, those memories return just as powerfully as they did the first time. I have no idea how long it’s been since its last owner smoked it, but in the years I’ve had it, there seems to have been very little degradation of the aroma, and that’s […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 635. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with James Ravenwood. James is the boutique tobacco blender of Ravenwood Blends. His blending started out as a fun hobby, and he now has professionally packaged commercially available products with some great tin art. Part of his interest in pipe smoking goes back to fond memories of a retired Navy Veteran that lived on his street while he was growing up that would sit in his driveway smoking a pipe all day. Later, in 2011 he began smoking pipes and soon after started experimenting with mixing different tobaccos. His other hobby, that he has been doing for 30 years, is photography. He takes wonderful photos of outdoor spaces, and still life pictures of pipes and tobacco. You can see them on his Instagram @thebriarfellowship. At the top of the show we’ll have an Ask the Pipemaker segment with renowned pipe artisan Jeff Gracik.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 634! Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Warren Ertle. Warren is an extremely accomplished musician with a PhD in music. He started early as a percussionist in sixth grade. Later his grandmother got him a cheap Casio keyboard which he taught himself to play. He started playing in blues bands in high school, and has been a pianist with jazz big bands for years. Even though he was already a professional musician, he took his first real piano lesson when he enrolled in college with his studies in classical music. He is of course a pipe smoker. At the top of the show we will have an Ask the Tobacco Blender segment with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA.
Soon now, supposedly, our neighborhoods will shift from grinning pumpkins, skeletons in various assortments, and zombies dashing about to pretty reindeer, angels, and flashing lights illuminating homes with sparkling stars and laughing, scurrying Santas. But, lest we forget, there is the turkey season, fancy pie aromas wafting from kitchens, and a national pardon of a big Tom Turkey. Remember, now, that only one of these holiday personalities is a pipe smoker. And that is the hefty, bearded fellow in a bright red suit sitting in a sleigh with a herd of deer hitched up and ready to streak across the globe, bringing tidings of joy and many presents. Ok, the scene is set for the next couple of months, right? So, before we get too far off the beaten path, let’s just take a deep breath of fresh autumn air, shall we? Ahh. That’s better, isn’t it? What’s got the Pundit in a snit is not all the Halloween spooks who came a-jostling for candy. Or the wild turkeys gobbling in the backwoods or all the fuss and feathers over the big one—Christmas. No, it is that we might need to take note of all the little things that mean so much to us. Like a good sunrise (seriously, Pundit has not gone all Pollyanna.) Mayhaps we need to appreciate more of what we have than what we have not. Or something like that. Like, a good pipe in the morning with coffee as the dawn brings us coolish weather now that we have flipped the calendar to autumn. But it also brings beautiful leaves that have become a spectacle of technicolor in the wind. It is the little things. The rereading of an enjoyable book and finding something you did not see or learn in the first go-round. Or a stunning phrase you commit to memory with the re-read, while smoking that favorite pipe. And you notice a superior puff that just seems to be different. It’s in the air and the seasons of meaningful little things. It’s aromatic! 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Maybe especially with the help of their pipes in the art of thinking and philosophy. Recall the words of Mr. E=MC2 when he said, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” Amen and amen! Dealing with world-rattling events takes a calm and objective view of things, to the Pundit’s way of summing it up. You just don’t go messing around with quantum physics without a calm and objective approach, methinks. Or as the extraordinary physicist Robert Oppenheimer said after he and a team in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Labs developed a way to split atoms into bombs during World War II. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” said Oppenheimer referring to the development of the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. It must be pointed out that Oppenheimer was more of a cigarette smoker than a pipe smoker. Nonetheless, pipes were part of his personality. Now, if you have read some of the great authors of the past and present, their pipes were always nearby. Reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be a three-pipe problem at times. S. Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre require time with your pipes to reflect on the existential problems and solutions these authors provide in learned novels and other narratives. Or take Edwin Hubble and Bertrand Russell, philosophers of another world. Pipes are required for reading. The quantum lode of ideas Pundit is attempting to sort out is that our pipes are relaxing and stimulate our thoughts and creativity. Especially in these last months of the year. Many times Pundit has had that light bulb flick on while smoking my beloved pipes. And friends in Pipedom, it ain’t easy to turn on the lights in Pundit’s rock pit head. Now it’s time for a quote from a Pipe Smoker of the Past. Shelby Foote was born Nov. 17, 1916, in Greenville, Miss., and died June 27, 2005, in Memphis, Tenn. A fact is not a truth until you love it—Shelby Foote. A parting thought: It is said that famed Southern author William Faulkner carried a packed pipe in a coat pocket wherever he went. That’s one effective way to deal with workday conflicts and confusion. A calm and objective judgment in our everyday human affairs, as the quantum man said.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 633. Our featured guest tonight is Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and the accompanying online store. We’ll have JD and Brian talking about what’s new at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, Brian will discuss tobacco growing, what happens to the leaf, and provide updated information on where tobacco is being gown today. Tobacco production originated in the United States and we were once the #1 producer. It’s quite different now.
Very cool. Love the history behind the names. Would love to visit Italy and some of those shops, especially the ones where you can sit and smoke, and chat
It certainly would be s treat to visit some of the shops and factories in Italy. Great read!
Very good read! Learned a few things!!
Very informative.