Ascorti New Dear Wax Drip Carved Poker Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

Description

Ascorti belongs to a historic lineage in Italian artisan pipe-making. Guiseppe ‘Peppino’ Ascorti was first employed as a pipe-maker in the 1950s, in Carlo Scotti’s Castello workshop in Cantu. There he met Luigi Radice, and in the 1960s the two decided to leave Castello to create their own pipe-making workshop, under the name ‘Caminetto.’ At the end of the 1970s, Guiseppe Ascorti and Luigi Radice left Caminetto and once more decided to start new ventures. Luigi Radice founded the Radice pipe workshop, and Guiseppe’s son Roberto Ascorti, who had also worked in the Caminetto workshop since he was a child, decided to create a workshop under his own name. Roberto was joined not only by his father, but also many of the talented craftsmen who had formerly worked for Caminetto. In 1980, the Ascorti workshop was born.

Though figural motifs have been used in pipe carving for centuries, in the context of Italian workshop pipes, so-called “wax drip” finishes can be traced back to Castello and the “Epoca,” an early line that was removed from regular production in the 1960s. The Epoca was reborn, one might say, at Caminetto, under the direction of two former Castello craftsmen, Guiseppe Ascorti and Luigi Radice, whose own rendition was named the “New Dear.” After Caminetto disbanded in the 1970s (and prior to being restarted in the 1980s), Luigi Radice and Guiseppe Ascorti started their own workshops once again, this time separately. Each took the wax-drip motif and renewed it once more: Radice with his “Underwood”; and Ascorti with his own “New Dear.” The latter was not just more faithful in name to the old Caminetto version, but was arguably closest to it, adhering to the same rustic and naturalistic design approach for the new New Dear. This particular pipe is one such example and, as Ascorti pipes tended to be in the workshop’s first decades, it also follows other design conventions first established at Caminetto, including its muscular aesthetic and signature asymmetric saddle stem, cut from a slightly colorful Lucite. While the Ascortis (now a family-run workshop) still craft New Dear pipes, to my knowledge it has been many years since they did so in the old Caminetto style, like this one, making it a nice little rarity to come across.

This pipe is completely unsmoked, with an original bowl coating.

 

Details:

Length: 5.6″ / 142.2mm

Bowl Width: 0.88 / 22.35mm

Bowl Depth: 1.45″ / 36.83mm

Weight: 1.9oz / 56g