(continued)

"Milan and Varese, on the other hand, had the indus-trial tradition of the north of Bruto Sordini of Don Carlos Italy," he continues. "You can trace the anima (soul, spirit) of Brebbia and Savinelli back to the great Fratelli Rossi factory near Varese. They made up to 50,000 pipes a day at the beginning of the century. That's 12 million pipes a year from one factory! When Buzzi (Brebbia) and Savinelli started together, and then split up, that was their tradition. To this day the factory concept drives both of their thinking and shows in their classical shapes, which I think are the best in the world. Even though they do make some very fine hand-carved pipes, they start conceptually with what can be made by machine and go on from there. The pipemakers around Gavirate-Ardor, Talamona, and others, are in the Savinelli-Brebbia orbit."

"What about Castello?" we ask, intrigued by Guidi's opinions and urging him to continue.

"Castello started the new Italian pipe. When Carlo Scotti began the company right after World War 11, his concept was to make radi-cal innovations on standard forms and to make only the highest quality [product] for a small market of connoisseurs who could afford to pay the price. He used a very basic machine to cut the rough forms for consistent shapes, and then completed all the rest by hand. Great pipes, beautiful shapes. Of course there were also freehands, but only a small percentage. Ascorti and Radice originally worked for Castello, and when they went out on their own they carried out a similar idea: variations on classical themes, as seen in machined pipes. For that kind of artisan work, I think that Roberto Ascorti is one of the best pipernakers in the world today."

Asked about the difference between the northern schools and Pesaro, Guidi responds, "We started as self-taught arti-sans, who then learned from each other. Some had worked in the northern factories, oth-ers spent time in Livorno with Cesare Barontini (a major sup-plier of raw briar for the Italian pipernakers and a large scale contract manufacturer of pipes to the world market.) I was self taught. As a universi-ty student of art and design, I started to make my own pipes and then, because there was no work in my field, decided to do that for a living. The only machines I had were a saw, a lathe, and a sander. And that's all I have now, although more of the same."

Guidi's first company wasn't Ser Jacopo; it was Mastro de Paja, which he started in 1970. In 1982, Guidi left Mastro to his partners and started Ser Jacobo, where he continued to make large and over-sized "organic" shapes determined by the grain of the wood, and implemented elaborate ornamentation at the joint between the wooden shank and the lucite stem. "In my exploratory phase with Mastro and then in the new company, I made sculpture, not pipes that were comfortable and smokeable. Then I returned to the clas-sics, as a type of maturity. I search for thematic material in folklore, art history, and pipe traditions," Guidi explains.

One of the major accomplishments of Giancarlo Guidi is indi-rect: whether in the earlier phases of his career or the most recent, most of the Pesaro pipernakers have come under his influence. Either they worked for him or learned from him as apprentices. For example, Bruto Sordini origi-nally studied medicine but was entranced by pipernaking, and learned the basics from a local carver in his native town of Cagli, in the mountains an hour west of Pesaro. Guidi supplied briar and the two became friends. Then Guidi asked Sordini to join him when he started Ser Jacopo in 1982. Since 1988, Sordini has made his own Don Carlos pipe in a purpose-built workshop in Cagli.

With a spectacular view of the mountains through the huge windows that flood his workshop with light, and opera blasting on his stereo, Sordini, his wife Rosaria, and one assistant make some of the finest examples of large freehand classics we've seen from the Pesaro school. Guidi's influence is evident in the clean lines and balanced proportions, with surprising angles and curves, although the Don Carlos pipes are gen-erally larger than his men-tor's. Sordini also likes to add substantial ornamentation to the mouthpiece/bowl joint, like Guidi. Sordini's pre-pipe medical studies show too, with his scientific background leading him to invent and patent a carefully researched water filtration and mois-ture removal system in his "Hydra" pipe. His early apprenticeship with the local craftsman, along with the rugged local geography, also influence the outdoor character of his carving.

A more subtle Guidi influence is on Il Ceppo. According to Franco Rossi, who heads the company now, his sister and co-worker Nadia founded the company with her hus-band, master carver Georgio Imperatori, now retired. Imperatori worked with Guidi in the early days and started Il Ceppo when Guidi start-ed Mastro. Somewhat younger, Franco Rossi started at Mastro after Guidi had gone on to form Ser Jacopo, and learned the Guidi style of pipemaking, the style Mastro still uses today. Later, Rossi joined Imperatori at Il Ceppo, and eventually took over.

Rossi, an amiable man who instantly makes you feel that you've know him forever, has a passion for classics, all hand-turned, but with differences in proportion from the traditional shapes. An unusually wide shank will flow from a narrow bowl, or vice versa. Innovative silver bands adorn the shanks, and the mouthpieces are jewel-perfect in size and proportion. "The classi-cal mode comes from Imperatori," Rossi says, "but the freehands have the flavor of Montini's Mastro, courtesy of Guidi."

The next stop on our journey is Mastro de Paja, where Alberto Montini shows us his immaculate factory, where five micromanaged pipernakers are kept busy. "Mastro de Paja is still producing the freehand style pipes the company pioneered in the early days, except that the sizes are a bit small-er," Montini tells us. One mandated innovation here is that the finishers work on different shapes randomly sorted to keep their attention fresh and to avoid the numbing repe-tition of looking at the same pipes all day long. Montini, a keen observer of business trends, notes that he too is moving toward moderate sized classics in his 1998/99 collections. "The younger men want smaller, less obvious pipes," he says, "and we want the younger men as customers. This is a market-driven business."

Whether the members of the Pesaro school acknowledge or deny it, their history echoes Giancarlo Guidi's own. All of them run small artisan workshops that they started, with difficulty, when they decided to go it alone, and all use limited machinery. All hire workers who can carry out any phase of pipernaking, some of whom, in fact, split their time among the different makers' workshops, as the season and production schedules demand. All, moreover, bring a high degree of similarity in method and style to their work, with the distinct differences that personality dictates.

The Pesaro pipernakers have one other thing in common: they all have a prominently displayed picture of the world-renowned tenor Luciano Pavarotti smoking one of their pipes. A passionate pipe smoker, Pavarotti has a home nearby on the Adriatic shore, and homage paid to him with a gift of a specimen briar from one of the pipe maestros begets a photo posed with that pipe. And we are assured that Pavarotti smokes them all.