We are proud to share Savinelli's 150th Anniversary Capri pipes, showcasing a revival of one of the Italian marque's most famous and unique finishes, the Capri, in celebration of 150 years. These pipes are available now on-site in limited quantities.

[Shane Ireland]: We're here today to talk about a really fun project with Savinelli. This is a revival of one of their most famous and unique finishes, the Capri.

[Sykes Wilford]: I've long loved the Capri series. Savinelli was founded in 1876, so this is their 150th anniversary year.

[SI]: Congratulations, Savinelli.

[SW]: Congratulations, Savinelli. Happy birthday.

Revival of Capri Rustication

Back in 2024, in anticipation of this anniversary, I spoke with Sonya, who at the time was CEO of Savinelli, and she wanted to do a project around a revival of an old, iconic Savinelli series. Immediately I thought of the Capri. She wasn't sure we could do it because that rustication hadn't been done in years.

[SI]: There was a point where you and I were talking about Capris with them in Italy — this was really early on in my career — and we were told that the technique has been lost. The person who was doing the rustication historically back in the day basically didn't pass it on and recreating it was a big endeavor. But it sounds like they figured it out anyway.

[SW]: The 150th anniversary was probably the only time I could convince them to do it.

For a little background, the Capri series was made from sometime in the 1950s until maybe the early 1980s. It was a really important part of Savinelli's portfolio of finishes for many really important decades in the post-war period. We still see them on the estate market with some regularity. They made a lot of them.

[SI]: We've had examples that still had the four-digit shape code, which is pre-1970 production. For many decades, the only hope as a collector that you had to find a Capri was on the estate market because recreating this finish from the ground up, without the expertise from days past, was gonna be a very labor-intensive endeavor.

The Capri is effectively a compound finish of carving and rustication in a way that Savinelli really innovated back in that time period.

[SW]: Yeah, you see that in this series and in the Alligator series, for example.

[SI]: And the seasonal rusticated Naturals that come out every year.

[SW]: There's this mode of thinking with rustication that is special to Savinelli.

[SI]: I think one of my favorite things about the Capri is that it has the really old-school, craggy texture that we associate with a lot of early 20th century pipes, whether rusticated or sandblasted. The way that they apply this finish is really well suited to a lot of different models. It's kind of easy to make an Apple or a Billiard rusticated uniformly, over and over and over again. A finish like this, as complex as it is and as time consuming as it is, applying it to so many different shapes is also a feat.

A Wide Array of Shapes

What about shape selection for this project?

[SW]: That was one of the aspects that I was really excited about at the beginning of this. I pushed for a massive number of shapes, because it's what I always do. You'll see the standard Savinelli stalwarts that have been in the catalog the whole time, and also a bunch of cool old shapes.

I was asking for all of these different shapes and they're like, we don't know what we can do. They went away, dug around in the factory, and then sent me an email about a month later and said they'd found a bunch that were already rusticated that were just sitting as heads in the factory that they found in a bin. All of them are oddball old shapes. Some of them we have two of, others seven, so it varies.

The 901 Opera and 627 are available.

[SI]: 627 is so cool. The triangle shank that you see on the 673 half saddle is one of my favorite shapes that you never find anymore.

[SW]: Yeah, and the 125 Pot is a super obscure shape, at this point. It's an absolutely lovely classic straight Pot that we haven't seen in current production in forever.

[SI]: The 130 bent stack Oval shape also looks amazing in that finish.

[SW]: I love old Savinelli shapes like this, with super lithe shanks and tall bowls, and there's just something wonderfully iconic about some of these old shapes that have been lost in time.

[SI]: Some of these shapes are from the late 1960s, early 1970s, and into the 1980s. They're what we think of now as the neoclassics with exaggerated features. That style was really propelled into the mainstream by Castello, Radice, and Caminetto. I feel like this design language here is really what made Italian pipes come away from the Anglo-French lead, making them unique, different, and desirable during that period. I just love this design language and I think the 627 and the 130 are just excellent examples of it.

Vulcanite Stems & Unfiltered Pieces

What about stem material?

[SW]: These all have vulcanite stems. I absolutely insisted that these needed to be made like they were back in the 1960s. They pulled out all the stops and went through all their old stem bins. It's particularly impressive, given the oddballness of some of these shapes. They really made a big effort to get all of this absolutely right just the way it would've been done 70, 80 years ago.

[SI]: Amazing. In addition to the vulcanite stems, and the old finish, these are three millimeter pipes.

[SW]: Yes, they're all unfiltered, just like they would've been in the 1960s. I think some of the later ones did have six millimeter filters, but the original series wouldn't have.

That allowed us to include a bunch of shapes that they will not put six millimeter filters in because it makes the shank walls too thick.

[SI]: You basically can't do it, yeah.

[SW]: Doing three millimeters gave us a lot of flexibility to include anything from their shape portfolio that we could make work.

Collector's Pipe Featuring Historic Savinelli Style

[SI]: It's a really authentic and fitting celebration for their 150th anniversary, and again, if you're collectors like us who have chased old Capris on the estate market for many years, here's your chance to get it, especially when it comes to some of these shapes here that just will not and cannot return to this series, even if we were very convincing to ask them to do it again at any point in the future. It's super cool. Capri is an iconic finish for an iconic brand and a lot of shapes, offering something for everybody.

[SW]: Thank you.

[SI]: Again, happy 150th, Savinelli.