Ser Jacopo Gem Series Granato Smooth Dublin Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

Description

Ser Jacopo is one of the most famous contemporary examples of high-grade, workshop-made Italian pipes. It also belongs to a very special tradition in Italian pipe-making, having been established by Giancarlo Guidi and Bruno Sordini after the two had left another great Italian workshop, Mastro de Paja. Together, Guidi and Sordini created a brand of pipes that reflected their Renaissance sensibilities – even the figurehead of Ser Jacopo happens to be taken from a painting of a nobleman from centuries past – one that would soon become esteemed for creating unique and beautiful tobacco pipes that smoked just as well as they looked.

Ser Jacopos are high-end pipes. But, as with many high-end makes, some of their pipes are more high-end than others. For Dunhill it’s the Dead Root, for Castello there are lines like the Aristocratica, and so on. For Ser Jacopo, the zenith of the workshop’s output is the Gem Series, pipes with only the most spectacular grain patterns, which are fittingly inlaid with an 18 karat gold-mounted precious stone rather, than the usual Ser Jacopo stem logo.
One rather telling historical anecdote about Ser Jacopo is that Giancarlo Guidi originally wanted all Ser Jacopo pipes to have such an inlay, as an indication of just how superior Ser Jacopo pipes were. This was the case for the very first Ser Jacopo pipes in the early 1980s but, ultimately,  the workshop had to switch to a silver-mounted coral dot inlay for most Ser Jacopo pipes, presumably because the latter was financially more tenable. Instead, Guidi et al. compromised—not on quality, of course, but on what it would take for a pipe to qualify for such an expensive ornament, raising the bar even higher so that only the finest Ser Jacopos the workshop produced would become part of its Gem Series. The Granato, seen here, is one of those pipes, with a gold-mounted garnet stone serving as the proverbial cherry on top of such a finely grained, large Dublin.

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

Details:

Length: 6.0″ / 152.4mm

Bowl Width: 0.89 / 22.60mm

Bowl Depth: 1.80″ / 45.72mm

Weight: 2.1oz / 62g