Gheppo (Danilo Zunino) Natural Smooth Volcano with Horn (Unsmoked Estate)

Italian for “Kestrel,” Gheppo is the pipe making moniker of Ligurian artisan Danilo Zunino. Zunino is one of a small number of figures to have apprenticed under the legendary Domenico “Mimmo” Romeo, one of the world’s foremost briar cutters (and the reason that so many pipe makers pride themselves on using “Mimmo briar”), as well as a master artisan in his own right. Zunio trained under Mimmo for many years while preparing to establish Gheppo Pipes, something expressed in the sheer quality of the works that ultimately came from that preparation. These days, Zunino’s output under the Gheppo name remains small, with around just 30 made per year. Part of this comes down to the intense time and labor that goes into them, and part comes down to Zunino having founded his own briar mill and the collaborative pipe manufacturing project Zemua.

With this particular Gheppo we see the impact of Zunino’s tutelage with Mimmo in full effect. As one would expect, briar is very important for Zunino, and his preference has always been for natural finishes (whether smooth or sandblasted) that leave said briar in its virgin state, with its various innate patternings allowed to speak for themselves. In the case of this one, the briar is indeed extraordinary, distinguished by a careful arrangement of fine, “angel” hair straight grain around the bowl and a concentrated burst of bird’s-eye at its underside. I imagine that Zunino will have had access to an enviable stock of choice Italian briar when setting out to make the pipe, though the care that will have gone into its shaping, ensuring that the best of the briar is brought to the surface and all else is sloughed off, should not be discounted. A high-grade pipe requires high-grade briar, to be sure, but this means little without a high-grade artisan to coax the pipe out of it.

This pipe is completely unsmoked. A couple of very small scratches around the top of the bowl, though nothing major.

Details:

Length: 6.5″ / 165.1mm

Chamber Width: 0.82″ / 20.82mm

Chamber Depth: 1.71″ / 43.43mm

Bowl Height: 2.21″ / 56.13mm

Weight: 3.0oz / 86g