Welcome to another episode of All Pipes Considered. Today Sykes Wilford and I are talking about something very special: the beginning of a year-long celebration of Smokingpipes.com's 25th anniversary, Savinelli's Smokingpipes' 25th Anniversary pipes.

[Shane Ireland]: Sykes, why don't you take us back, for those who may not be aware, to the brief history of the company, where it got started, and how we arrived at 25 years.

Smokingpipes' Inception

[Sykes Wilford]: Sure. I was a student in Nashville, and I was working part time at a shop that is now gone called Ellison Place Pipe and Tobacco. It was there that I fell head over heels in love with pipes. At the same time, this was all in like 1998, 1999, the internet was going to change everything, and of course it has, just not in any of the ways we anticipated in those days.

I thought, well, hey, wouldn't it be cool to sell pipes on the internet? I started hatching this plan in late 1999, beginning of 2000. By the middle of 2000, I was laying down the framework for Smokingpipes. In October, November of 2000, we sold our first pipe. That was all in Nashville and then we moved to South Carolina at the beginning of 2003.

25th Anniversary Releases

[SI]: Pivoting a little bit to this specifically, in thinking about how we wanted to celebrate the 25th anniversary, one of the most immediate and logical places to start was with Savinelli.

Savinelli's been a part of our company's history for a very long time, and even before, we represented them in the US as their distributor. They've been a part of pipe-smoking history for a very long time as well. This project to celebrate our 25th anniversary of Savinelli began about a year ago, right?

[SW]: Yes, it was January of last year that I raised this as a project. Savinelli is a really important relationship for me. I'm very close to that factory and the management of that factory. It's in many respects our deepest, longest partnership with another company, so kicking this off with them was a logical choice.

[SI]: Yeah, absolutely.

[SW]: The plan for the 25th anniversary is that we were going to celebrate with partnerships with a variety of pipe makers and such.

[SI]: Much like our 20th anniversary, there will be ongoing releases and projects throughout the year, to some extent.

[SW]: Yes, so this represents the first of a series of projects of an indeterminate, at this point, number. We still don't have it totally pinned down.

[SI]: That's part of the fun though, I think.

[SW]: Yes. Fortunately it's January. We have time. But we've been lining these things up and organizing them for this whole year to celebrate our 25th anniversary and we've had a lot of partners in the industry that we're really close with participate, so we're excited.

Savinelli's Smokingpipes 25th Anniversary Pipes

[SW]: Savinelli was the first. I started talking with them in late January of last year when I visited them and began looking at our options. I really love silver on pipes and Savinelli's silverwork isn't done nearly as much as Peterson, for example. These feature silver army mounts and visually a very Savinelli kind of shape, but not something in the regular shape chart.

[SI]: Sure, but still the classic sensibilities which, in my opinion, differ from the English shape chart and the Irish classics we see. This is a good example of that, but outside of the very unique Savinelli shapes, like the 320 KS and those similar models, their takes on classics are elegant, lithe, very trim, and very elegant.

[SW]: Yeah. I'm particularly fond of Savinelli shapes with thinner shanks and a more streamlined lithe, to use your verbage. I think this long-shank bent Billiard is a really nice example of that. We also did the Smokingpipes' red push stems. They are mounted with a Smokingpipes logo rondelle in silver on the silver mounts.

[SI]: Yeah, that turned out so nice. I also love the high quality of these bowls. The finishes that we've chosen to pair with the Smokingpipes' red stem are also very smart, and those stems are another tribute to us as a company. The combinations here look great. It's a little bit of a pop of color. I also am very fond of how the three stain options, broken up by the silver mount, compliment the red stem.

[SW]: It's compositionally very nice.

High-Quality Bowls

[SI]: Once you guys decided what the shape was going to be, along with the silver work and the stem, tell me about the grading and the quality of these bowls.

[SW]: We spent a bunch of time working in the factory, developing this release, looking at bowls, looking at and thinking about grades, and so forth. We wanted to use very nice bowls for this special project with Savinelli. So these pipes have very high-quality bowls.

[SI]: Yeah, they are gorgeous. Sourcing the level of quality of bowls that you were looking for, you have to turn a hell of a lot of them to yield this level of quality in a single shape.

[SW]: The natural in particular has nearly perfect straight grain.

[SI]: Even the darker stained ones are just as good.

[SW]: Yeah, even the sandblasts need consistent graining that is vertical to achieve the result we were going for.

[SI]: Even the flame options here have a medium stain. I mean, they look fantastic. There's a nice bit of contrast. You can even see the grain inside the chambers here as being very nice. It's also well-cured briar that is very lightweight in general. Some of that is the design itself being very elegant and very trim. I think these are going to be workhorse smokers.

[SW]: That's one of the things I love about Savinelli; they're my workhorse, day in, day out pipes. I smoke them all the time.

[SI]: As for Group size here, I think it's in the large Group Three, Group Four territory. Again, they're super lightweight, especially with that bend. These are clenchers and they're pretty ones at that.

This is an extremely limited release, but that's the way it goes when you want grain like this. There's 75 pieces total. Between the three finishes, there's only 11 naturals, 29 of the burgundy smooth, and only 35 of the sandblasted.

[SW]: That's correct. We're really excited to bring our first offering of our 25th anniversary special collection to you with these Savinelli pipes.

[SI]: Keep an eye out for the rest of the releases this year and thank you guys for 25 years.

[SW]: Yes. Thank you for 25 years.