Becker Smooth Billiard with Silver Spigot (Four Hearts) (1990s) Tobacco Pipe

The strange tale which led to the late Fritz Becker, an Austrian Jew by origin, and his son Paolo to becoming widely-recognized Italian pipemakers involves fleeing into Yugoslavia to avoid Nazi persecution, collaboration with British Intelligence, following the Allied advance to Rome, an introduction to pipe smoking by an English officer, and Fritz's unsatisfied tinkering with purchased pipes in his own attic art studio until he decided to just make one of his own. Father and son were still working together when Fritz passed in 1991, so depending on when this particular silver-spigot briar was turned, it is a product of either their last years together, or of Paolo's earliest years of solo work setting out to make a name for himself.

- Eric N. Squires