Le Nuvole 4 Cloud Smooth Calumet Estate Briar Pipe, Italian Estates

Description

Maurizio Tombari is one of the most interesting figures to emerge from the so-called “Pesaro school” of pipe making, which is a high bar to clear. Trained as a painter at Italy’s Accademia di Belle Art di Urbino, Tombari would ultimately join one of the founding pipe workshops of the Pesaro school, Mastro de Paja, working alongside its founders Giancarlo Guidi and Giannino Spadoni. After Guidi Mastro de Paja left to found Ser Jacopo with Bruto Sordini (another Mastro de Paja alum), Tombari joined him, working under Guidi until 1996. At this point, it was time for Tombari to depart again, this time with the intention of creating his own, independent pipe venture. But he would not be entirely on his own; like his former colleague Bruto Sordini, who had departed Ser Jacopo in the early 1990s to create Don Carlos pipes with his wife Rosaria, Maurizio Tombari was joined by his wife, Stefania, in his new endeavor. Together, Maurizio and Stefania Tombari created Le Nuvole, a partnership between two lifelong artists with a view to creating pipes as unique and harmonious as their meteorological namesake.

The calumet is a strangely popular shape within modern Italian pipe making. While its origins reside in the ceremonial pipes smoked by Native Americans, many notable post-war Italian pipe makers have created novel designs using the former as a kind of compositional scaffold—not unlike how early briar carvers modeled their designs on European clays. Often these Italian designs are mistaken for cavaliers (another briar shape based on pre-briar pipes), and while some examples do blend the calumet with the cavalier, the influence of the calumet is quite clear and sometimes plainly explicit, as in the case of Ser Jacopo. While its size is typical of a briar pipe, this one from the Tombaris’ Le Nuvole make is a very clear homage to the calumet, especially with its strict, angular figure, plugless “foot,” and is use of geometric carvings around the bowl section. In fact, despite (or, perhaps, because of) Maurizio Tomari’s previous experience working at Ser Jacopo, this rendition is even closer to an authentic Native American calumet than the Ser Jacopo model of that name.

The condition is great. Minor wear to the rim, but the pipe does not appear to have seen much use. It comes with its original box and sleeve.

Details:

Length: 6″ / 152.4mm

Bowl Width: 0.81 / 20.57mm

Bowl Depth: 1.46″ / 37.08mm

Weight: 1.4oz / 40g