Ser Jacopo Insanus 3 Spongia S3 Sandblasted Poker Estate Briar Pipe, Italian Estates

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 perfectly as they looked.

True to their name, Ser Jacopo’s Insanus pipes are a little bit mad. While Ser Jacopo’s typical output is characterized by a grandiose, yet measured, Renaissance aesthetic, Insanus pipes defy formal conventions when it comes to pipe design, and indeed to the practical arts more broadly. They cross the boundaries of reason, as madness does, and come back with something genuinely extraordinary. This one, the number 3 shape within the Insanus series, begins with the basic figure of the traditional poker, one defined by a fairly rigid geometry and its implicated symmetries. Then, of course, it veers off in a very different direction (quite literally, in fact), adding a sharp 90 degree angle in the middle of the shank. You may wonder how this shaping is possible, or whether a second draft hole has been drilled and filled in order to create a continuous channel between the mouthpiece and the chamber. The answer is that Ser Jacopo is one of the few workshops in the world with specialized, flexible drilling apparatuses, allowing for a single, curved bore and clean draw.
This Insanus 3 is dressed in Ser Jacopo’s Sabbiata grade 3 sandblast, with the Spongia designation, a near-naked finish that colors in a golden hue over the course of its lifetime. It’s an approach not unlike the Dunhill Tanshell, or the Savinelli Punto Oro Corallo, albeit executed in a way that only the Ser Jacopo workshop could pull off.

The condition is excellent. Smoked once or twice, and gently, at most. Some very handling marks.

Details:

Length: 6.2″ / 157.4mm

Bowl Width: 0.83 / 21.08mm

Bowl Depth: 1.60″ / 40.64mm

Weight: 3.1oz / 88g