Don Carlos One Note Partially Rusticated Pot Estate Briar Pipe, Italian Estates

Description

Don Carlos belongs to a historic lineage within Italian pipe making. The workshop was founded by Bruto Sordini (along with his wife Rosaria), who had previously made pipes for Mastro de Paja, where he also met Giancarlo Guidi. In 1981, Sordini and Guidi left Mastro de Paja to found their own workshop, Ser Jacopo. After years of making pipes at Ser Jacopo, Sordini once again departed to found a new venture, as he had ideas for shapes and styles that were quite different to Ser Jacopo’s established design philosophy. Sordini therefore created Don Carlos as a means of expressing this vision, resulting in pipes that are both quintessentially Italian, and bearing aesthetic that is wholly their own.

Bruto and Rosaria Sordini’s designs range from the bombastic to the reserved, from the freeform to the careful geometry of the Anglo-French standards. But even in the cases of the latter, they maintain an aesthetic that is beautifully out of the ordinary. This two-note grade Don Carlos, for example, is essentially a very old fashioned English pot, one not entirely unlike, say, a GBD 9437, or a Charatan 148. It retains the squat, muscular physique of such renditions (as well as their sloped inner rim), yet also adds just a little more height and heft, and rounds out the edges to give it a decidedly natural feel. Unlike just about any of the old English pipes, on the other hand, this pot rendition is dressed in Bruto and Rosaria’s especially granular take on Italy’s time-honored sea-stone rustication, mixing the classic, midnight-black finish with a blonde, smooth rim.

The condition is great. Very minor rim darkening. Smoked once or twice, and gently.

Details:

Length: 5.3″ / 134.6mm

Bowl Width: 0.86 / 21.84mm

Bowl Depth: 1.40″ / 35.56mm

Weight: 2.0oz / 58g