Don Carlos XL Partially Rusticated Brandy w/ Silver Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

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.

As I’ve mentioned before, there is something of a minor tradition in high-grade Italian workshop pipes, that being designs based on, or evocative of, earthenware. This is quite apparent in the “Pesaro School,” to which Don Carlos, Ser Jacopo, and Le Nuvole belong, but it also extends to figures such as the late Luigi Viprati and Massimo Palazzi and Andrea Pascucci’s L’Anatra. Pottery abounds in these pipes, though in a far less fragile form. This one, from Don Carlos, is decidedly culinary, with a cauldron- or pan-like figure. Dressed in a natural, predominantly rusticated finish, there are, nonetheless, sections of the stummel base left smooth, where flame grain licks like a fire at the fire at the bowl’s base. <[>

This pipe is completely unsmoked.

Details:

Length: 6″ / 152.4mm

Bowl Width: 0.94 / 23.87mm

Bowl Depth: 2.14″ / 54.35mm

Weight: 2.6oz / 76g