I'm the owner of a nice little smoke shop in Boca Raton, FL. Called Bennington Tobacco. We do a lot of cigar and pipe events throughout the year. I ride a Harley with a bunch of guys who also ride Harleys. As people always ask me about pipes and cigars I decided to create this blogg page.
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| Kern |
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| SOG 15 Tool Assist |
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| 81/4" Laguiole folding knife |
Ser Jacopo - Gepetto
As far as I can remember, the Italians have been one of the strongest leaders in design and art in the western world. Influencing the French, the English, the Nordic cultures and the Germans. Their design has a strong sense of elegance that dates from the late 1940s.
The Italians took the English shapes; Billiards, Dublins, Bulldogs, and recreated them in interesting ways…Most of them came from Pesaro. Como or Northern Milan. Some of the brands that come to mind would be Brebbia, Radice, Ser Jacopo, Rinaldo, Castello and Ascorti. They all have a streak of the Italian Neoclassic, with considerable conceptual differences and market objectives.
The Pesaro style is mostly neoclassical. Italian pipes are, like their cars, more modern and more chic in their elegance.
The Pesaro school is also associated with Mastro de Paja, Ser Jacopo and Il Ceppo. An open flow of ideas and creativity generally developed during the early years by Giancarlo Guidi (of Mastro de Paja), Georgio Imperatori (of Il Ceppo), spilled into the younger generation in the likes of Bruto Sordiny (of Don Carlos) and Ricardo (from Alantra).
Castello
Carlo Scotti Castello carries the reputation for being the first high end pipe company, having started in 1947. Although not a carver himself, Castello developed his talent for creating beautiful designs into a new direction with Luigi Radice and Pepino Ascorti, both pipe carvers. Luigi and Pepino later created Caminetto, Ascortti, another part of pipe lineage that spilled into Brebbia and Savinelli. The later having a different concept, that of the factory and not the workshop. Brebbia today produces around 40,000 pipes annually, a big difference when compare to Radice and his 2 sons, who produce a maximum of 2000 pieces per year. Brebbia’s objective is manufacturing efficiency– being able to produce a great pipe at an affordable price. 
Il Ceppo
Italian pipe makers describe the main difference between pipe making in the Como region (the North) and in Pesaro. In the North, it’s the manufacturing that’s important, and in Pesaro it’s the tradition of the small craftsman that carries weight.
Lastly, there is also the fact that some of the best briar blocks come from Italy. The roots coming from Corsica, France, Italy, Greece and Spain.
Maybe I should have started here, talking about Mimo and his father, cutting briar for Denmark, England, Japan and the US.
So there… a little history about out favorite hobby.
As Jim would say long ashes everyone…. Until next week.
Christina
There is no one person responsible for the “Big Bang theory”; in fact it came from a string
of different people and their discoveries. Thanks to the earlier discoveries by Alexander Freidman, Georges Lemeaitr and Vest Slipher , the scientist to put
the final dot and cross the last ”t” was Edwin Hubble. Even though he died in 1953 his last great award for his efforts was the Hubble telescope launched by NASA in 1990.
Edwin was born in Marshfield, Missouri in 1889. In his later teens he was 6 feet and some… Excelling in high jump, basketball and track. His grades were very good in almost everything except spelling. He loved fly-fishing and was an amateur boxer as well.
The "Hubble law", which predicted the expansion of universe, therefore the possibility of the Big Bang. Hubble explained that the red glint in the faint light wavelengths showed the powerful force moving at tremendous speeds and that the more distant the nebulae, the faster they moved from the earth. It was then that Hubble came up with the equation v = H0D This forced Einstein to reexamine his own math, relatively speaking, on all that the Earth and space discoveries with which Einstein wrinkled the heavens and warped time (excerpt from Fred Brown)….
Even though he was born in the US Edwin was enamored with everything English. So much so that he adopted the same pronunciation and cadence of speech. He sounded like an Englishman. Edwin also became an inveterate pipe smoker and as to be expected he mostly smoked Dunhill pipes. He was always seen with his pipe in hand or dangling from his mouth. And at times a cigar would pass his lips…
Within the Hubble family Edwin was thought to have taken after his grandfather Martin, who also smoked a pipe and was a charming story teller. This characteristic became so part of the Edwin persona that people tell the story of his attempt to spar with the world’s heavyweight champion Jack Johnson and later with the French heavyweight George Charpentier. He obviously never lost but always came to a draw.
His father wanted him to become a lawyer but he had other ideas. Edwin wanted to become a Rhodes Scholar at Ox ford, England and study astronomy. He then won a scholarship to Chicago University, took all the subjects that delighted him plus those required for a Law degree. Which he never got.
In 1910 Edwin was chosen for the Rhodes scholarship. It took him to Oxford, England. He studied at Queens College until 1913. Just before he graduated his father passed away. Edwin was both saddened and liberated from his father’s expectations. He was then free to explore the heavens to his desire’s content.
Although he claimed to be in the Meuse-Argonne offensive, his war record is somewhat cloudy, subject to his fisherman story telling…
For Hubble the years post WWI were bright and full of great clarity in his work and personal life.
By 1930’s Edwin was married and living in California, in the San Gabriel Valley. It was a constant party scene with visiting movie stars and socialites.
And still at this time Hubble was always with his pipe, and his tobacco was specially ordered from the London (Dunhill) Pipe Shop of Los Angeles, which unfortunately does not exist anymore.
One of Hubble’s favorite tricks was to strike a wooden match, flip it into the air and catch it in his pipe and light the tobacco.
Hubble past away in 1953 from a brain clot, a little over his 65th birthday. By then he had amassed a huge collection. What happened to it? No one knows…. Hubble was a public man but a private scientist. His wife burned all his papers and other important documents, even their letters, after her husband’s death.
Some of those Dunhill pipes would be pre-WWI and since they had no children the collection is more likely to have been lost.
Among his many awards was the Gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1940. He never won the NOBEL but because of his efforts NASA launched the telescope in his name, the Hubble Space Telescope, in 1990. Its all he imagined a telescope should be. Showing the birth of stars, black holes, collisions of galaxies, supernova explosions, which suggests the expansion of the universe is accelerating….
...til next time... smooth puffing everyone
Christina
