Two La Savinelli Giubileo Pipes

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georged

Lifer
Mar 7, 2013
5,491
13,920
Increasing chamber diameter is easy...

Increasing it on-axis and symetrically is surprisingly difficult. Special tools and techniques are required. Simple over-reaming will not do it.

I think those pipes are early GdO specimens, made when Savinelli was copying Britwood more than developing their own chunkier Italian styling, and older Britwood tends to have thinner walls than what "looks normal" today.
 
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02Knight

Can't Leave
Aug 24, 2020
333
401
71
Rockett, Texas. South of DFW Metroplex
Increasing chamber diameter is easy...

Increasing it on-axis and symetrically is surprisingly difficult. Special tools and techniques are required. Simple over-reaming will not do it.

I think those pipes are early GdO specimens, made when Savinelli was copying Britwood more than developing their own chunkier Italian styling, and older Britwood tends to have thinner walls than what "looks normal" today.
@georged GdO??? English for a noob please. Thanks for your thoughts. I am sure they are older Savs. Both of them are way to symmetrical for someone to do with a reamer I am sure of that.
 

georged

Lifer
Mar 7, 2013
5,491
13,920
GdO??? English for a noob please.

Sorry. Short for Giubileo D'Oro. (It means "golden jubilee" in Italianese)

They were once EXTREMELY rare. The best 100 or so specimens each year of several hundred thousand pipes produced. Most were retained by the Savinelli family to give as gifts to VIPs, heads of state, and so forth. Few made it to the USA.

That changed a few years ago, though, when Sav changed hands. The bar was lowered, quotas had to be met, and the name simply became their highest standard shape grade.

The gold banded one is extra special, btw. I've seen only 4 or 5 in 40+ years. (All were shipped with an extra identical stem.)
 

02Knight

Can't Leave
Aug 24, 2020
333
401
71
Rockett, Texas. South of DFW Metroplex
Thanks for all the info @georged I'm alot more knowledgeable about them now thanks to you. I did not get an extra stem for the 18k gold band one. It was in a Paronelli sock and I'm sure it was not a mate to this Savinelli. It is a very handsome pipe and it is very light, weighing right at 0.9 oz. If it does not sell then it will go into my collection. I also feel better about the thin bowls. Someone was trying to tell me they were reamed to much and I could not see that as the case, you would have to be good with a reamer to do that fine a job. Just to symmetrical.
 

swilford

Starting to Get Obsessed
May 30, 2010
208
730
Longs, SC
corporate.laudisi.com
Sorry. Short for Giubileo D'Oro. (It means "golden jubilee" in Italianese)

They were once EXTREMELY rare. The best 100 or so specimens each year of several hundred thousand pipes produced. Most were retained by the Savinelli family to give as gifts to VIPs, heads of state, and so forth. Few made it to the USA.

That changed a few years ago, though, when Sav changed hands. The bar was lowered, quotas had to be met, and the name simply became their highest standard shape grade.

The gold banded one is extra special, btw. I've seen only 4 or 5 in 40+ years. (All were shipped with an extra identical stem.)

Hey George,

I just wanted to kick in some history and clarifications here (it's so rare that I find myself disagreeing with anything you write that I feel obliged to throw some stuff out there):

Savinelli has never changed hands, though the family has been less involved in managing the business progressively in recent decades. However, it is still very much owned by the Savinelli family and the family is involved in the business and its strategy, just not involved in day-to-day operations. Management has changed a few times over the years (most recently--and in my opinion for the good--around 2010). My intimate familiarity with the company really began in 2012, so I can't speak directly to management prior to then, except to say that there was a lot of problem solving and positive work done in the first few years after 2010 (looking at a whole lot of pipes circa 2009 and looking at a whole lot of pipes circa 2013, the average quality improved markedly).

Giubileo d'Oro Natural production in 2020 was fewer than fifty pipes, meaning that about one pipe in 1,800 from regular (non-Autograph) production made the grade. There was certainly a period in the 1990s and early 2000s where defining the series was a problem (this was actually worse with Punto Oro, which occupies the space immediately beneath it), but I don't think that has been true for some time.

Now, those pipes are more visible now because of the internet and because a pretty high percentage of them end up at Smokingpipes. Whereas twenty years ago, they'd have gone to shops in New York (or wherever, but De La Concha was a huge Savinelli store twenty years ago), they're now on the internet and far more visible.
 
Apr 2, 2018
3,112
35,188
Idong,South Korea.
If you have difficulty lighting the pipe and keeping it lit,everything else being in order,the chamber maybe too wide at the bottom. I actually made this mistake on a billiard I was cleaning up.It had quite a bit of char down there,and when I was trying to light it up for the first time,the draw was alot weaker than it would have been otherwise.could not light it up evenly or completely. Was all over but the crying.?I also think the Giubileo D'Oro smooths are the best pieces of wood Savinelli makes,better than the Autographs.Best of luck with yours. ?
 
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georged

Lifer
Mar 7, 2013
5,491
13,920
Thanks for the inside scoop on the Savinelli ownership situation. I thought (not sure why) that their handing off operations was a transfer of ownership. Learning that's NOT the case makes the tradition-lover part of my brain very happy. :)

10-4 also on GdO's being back to the standard of earlier days following their rough patch. When that happened I figured it was for keeps (market entropy rarely goes the other way), so paid far less attention to the line. Once again, learning that makes me smile.

Funny story about you, Sykes:

This past St. Louis show I was sitting around a table upstairs with a group of guys and the subject turned to Laudisi. Everyone agreed you had brought the PipeWorld into the 21st century in terms of business style and organization, and it was going smashingly well.

One of them wondered out loud how much money might be involved and etc., and when that mini-subject had run its course (it sounded like several of the guys knew business pretty well), I said into the silence: "Sykes doesn't care about money."

All the faces turned my way, of course. They countered with stuff like, "He's never taken a step backward!", and "Huh? You're crazy, George. He's killing it!"

Into the next silence, I said, "What Sykes cares about is creating happy customers... ...because when you do, the money takes care of itself. In a business like his, money is just a metric of customer satisfaction."

They all did that quick little head-snap-followed-by-a-stare thing, then broke into smiles when they realized that sure enough, they'd only rarely heard of someone having a problem with SmokingPipes on any level, and when they had, it had quickly been set right.

One of them even came up to me after the group dissolved and said the simplest things are sometimes the hardest to see, and he couldn't wait to tell "Sykes' Secret" to his son who was in the process of launching his first business.
 
Oct 7, 2016
2,451
5,195
In the early 1980’s, a couple of the Tinderboxes in Atlanta, Perimeter Mall and Lennoxx Square, seemed to always have one or two in stock. They sold. Tobacco Village across from Perimeter Mall in that same time period had a god relationship with Savinelli, USA,headquartered at that time in North Carolina. The salesman brought in four one weekend for a trunk show.

Without exception, they were well grained and with impeccable stem work. Maybe half I saw had factory gold. None had two stems that I recall. I never saw walls as thin as in the OP picture.

They were not on my radar screen after that period, as that is about when Grey market Castellos started being available in the US, breaking the Hollco artificial scarcity strangle hold.
 
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georged

Lifer
Mar 7, 2013
5,491
13,920
In the early 1980’s, a couple of the Tinderboxes in Atlanta, Perimeter Mall and Lennoxx Square, seemed to always have one or two in stock. They sold. Tobacco Village across from Perimeter Mall in that same time period had a god relationship with Savinelli, USA,headquartered at that time in North Carolina. The salesman brought in four one weekend for a trunk show.

Without exception, they were well grained and with impeccable stem work. Maybe half I saw had factory gold. None had two stems that I recall. I never saw walls as thin as in the OP picture.

They were not on my radar screen after that period, as that is about when Grey market Castellos started being available in the US, breaking the Hollco artificial scarcity strangle hold.
10-4 on Tinderbox having an "in" with GdO's. I got to know the owner of the Christown Mall store in Phoenix in the mid 80's well enough that he convinced the Sav rep to bring all he could put his hands on each time he came around, once he knew I collected them.

Quite a feeling to cherry pick a sample case of six or eight at a time. :)

I'm guessing that the second/duplicate stems were left in their boxes, and discovering they were there wouldn't happen unless you bought the pipe.

Oddly enough, I actually still have the second stem for a gold banded GdO that I gave to Greg Pease back in '08 after a phone conversation one night where he lamented the dearth of pots in the marketplace, which was his favorite shape. (At the time they didn't work for me). I sent it with the unused second stem for obvious reasons. The one I'd used for years I kept, though, as a souvenir of sorts. Of a sad love affair that never worked out. Or something. lol (It was a beautiful pipe)

Greg probably still has it even if it didn't work for him, again for obvious reasons.


PA186017.JPG
 

swilford

Starting to Get Obsessed
May 30, 2010
208
730
Longs, SC
corporate.laudisi.com
One of them wondered out loud how much money might be involved and etc., and when that mini-subject had run its course (it sounded like several of the guys knew business pretty well), I said into the silence: "Sykes doesn't care about money."

All the faces turned my way, of course. They countered with stuff like, "He's never taken a step backward!", and "Huh? You're crazy, George. He's killing it!"

Into the next silence, I said, "What Sykes cares about is creating happy customers... ...because when you do, the money takes care of itself. In a business like his, money is just a metric of customer satisfaction."

They all did that quick little head-snap-followed-by-a-stare thing, then broke into smiles when they realized that sure enough, they'd only rarely heard of someone having a problem with SmokingPipes on any level, and when they had, it had quickly been set right.

One of them even came up to me after the group dissolved and said the simplest things are sometimes the hardest to see, and he couldn't wait to tell "Sykes' Secret" to his son who was in the process of launching his first business.

I'm blushing, George. Thanks for your kind words.
 
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Oct 7, 2016
2,451
5,195
10-4 on Tinderbox having an "in" with GdO's. I got to know the owner of the Christown Mall store in Phoenix in the mid 80's well enough that he convinced the Sav rep to bring all he could put his hands on each time he came around, once he knew I collected them.

Quite a feeling to cherry pick a sample case of six or eight at a time. :)

I'm guessing that the second/duplicate stems were left in their boxes, and discovering they were there wouldn't happen unless you bought the pipe.

Oddly enough, I actually still have the second stem for a gold banded GdO that I gave to Greg Pease back in '08 after a phone conversation one night where he lamented the dearth of pots in the marketplace, which was his favorite shape. (At the time they didn't work for me). I sent it with the unused second stem for obvious reasons. The one I'd used for years I kept, though, as a souvenir of sorts. Of a sad love affair that never worked out. Or something. lol (It was a beautiful pipe)

Greg probably still has it even if it didn't work for him, again for obvious reasons.


View attachment 47496
George, the one GdO I actually bought was circa 1981-2 from the Tinderbox at Perimeter Mall in Atlanta. Whoever was manager then called me the day it arrived, I bought it that evening. A gorgeous bent billiard, can’t remember the shape #. No second stem. Not saying none of them came with two stems, but mine did not. Maybe the ones with gold bands did?
 
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