Ser Jacopo: Smooth Freehand (L1) (B) Tobacco Pipe

Ser Jacopo was founded in 1982 by legendary pipe maker Giancarlo Guidi. The workshop cultivated their signature Pesaro style, which delights in dramatic flourishes and whimsical stylings, even more so than the already playful Italian tradition. Sadly, Guidi passed away in 2012, but Ser Jacopo carries on his legacy. This Freehand features a unique sense of style, with a swan-like posture about its silhouette and an impressively compact stummel. This stummel mainly comprises the bowl, whose rather compressed look at the flanks contributes to a vast surface area in silhouette, with the fore wall rising high and forming a sharply cresting peak that pulls the eye to the front of this piece. The rim is dipped at the middle and is rounded by a firm ridge at its outer edge, while its aft end is interrupted by the sudden eruption of the shank, which lifts nearly vertically out of the surface and tapers to meet the stem. Said stem is a similarly tapering length of deeply curved black acrylic that poises this pipe for comfortable smoking and grants it a high-reaching dynamism. The stummel showcases handsome grain from beneath its warm, deep, chocolate-toned stain, with vast fields of birdseye on either flank and plenty of cross grain across the rim.