Caminetto 1986-7 Business Rusticated Apple Estate Briar Pipe, Italian Estates

Description

Caminetto was, and is to this day, a decisive figure in the history of Italy’s pipe workshop tradition. After spending time developing their skills in the Castello workshop, Guiseppe Ascorti and Luigi Radice left to found their own venture, which they named, “Caminetto.” Here, Ascorti and Radice were able to create their own now-classic shapes and finishes, such as the rusticated “Business,” and the carved, wax-drip “New Dear.” By the early 1980s, Ascorti and Radice had gone their separate ways and founded workshops under their own names, after which what remained of the Caminetto workshop mysteriously burned down and was dissolved. In the mid-1980s, however, the Ascorti family acquired the rights to the Caminetto brand, relaunching it as a separate, equally high-grade project alongside Ascorti pipes.

This is a rather interesting Caminetto pipe, belonging to a kind of “transtional” era between, on the one hand, the Caminetto workshop founded by Guiseppe Ascorti and Luigi Radice, and its modern, reborn guise under the charge of Guiseppe Ascorti and his son, Roberto (and, later, Roberto’s son, Tommaso). Depending on who you ask, it was made in either 1986 or 1987, just one or two years after the Ascorti’s acquired the rights to the Caminetto name. Much like the older Caminetto pipes, it is classical at heart, taking the form of a rusticated saddle-stemmed apple, and it keeps much of the older Caminetto style, being relatively stout dressed in a rugged, rusticated finish. But in both the former and the latter it is quite different to the old Caminetto approach, and indeed to the approach taken today. Its shaping is not as freeform as the older Caminetto pipes were, but it is not as genteel as the new; its finishing, similarly is not as irregular as the earlier Business rustication,, nor is it as fine and polished as an equivalent Caminetto made today. And that makes it all the more interesting, occupying a space between Caminetto as we know it, and Caminetto as it was once known.

It’s in great condition, too. Very minor rim darkening.

Details:

Length: 6″ / 152.4mm

Bowl Width: 0.80 / 20.32mm

Bowl Depth: 1.47″ / 37.33mm

Weight: 1.6oz / 46g