Giotto (628) (6mm) Tobacco Pipe

The Giotto series is named after none other than the artist Giotto di Bondone, a 13th century Florentine painter and architect that did more than any other to propel the early Renaissance. According to Giorgio Vasari, in his Lives of the Artists shares with us that Giotto, having been approached to demonstrate his skill while just an apprentice by a papal messenger, Giotto drew a perfect circle freehand and turned that over to the pope's messenger. This series of pipes from Savinelli celebrates that man, and that event, represented by the single beading at the top of the bowl. The series is highlighted by a dark, smokey, moody stain. Seriously, one look at these pipes and you'd swear they moonlight as blues musicians. The proportions of this bent brandy are perfect, but even better is the strip of cross grain running down the middle of the bowl, which separates patches of birdseye on both sides of the bowl. If this pipe actually were a blues musician, its name would be "Styles 'Sweetsmoke' Johnson."

--Cosmo Iannopollo