Ser Jacopo Divina Proportione Maxima Sandblasted Billiard Estate Briar Pipe, Italian Estates

Description

Ser Jacopo is one of the most famous contemporary example of high-grade, workshop-made Italian pipes. It also belongs to a very special tradition in Italian pipe-making, having been established by Giancarlo Guidi and Bruno Sordini after the two had left another great Italian workshop, Mastro de Paja. Together, Guidi and Sordini created a brand of pipes that reflected their Renaissance sensibilities – even the figurehead of Ser Jacopo happens to be taken from a painting of a nobleman from centuries past – one that would soon become esteemed for creating unique and beautiful tobacco pipes that smoked just as well as they looked.

What makes a perfect pipe? People wondered this, consciously or otherwise, for over a century, with countless variations gracing the shape charts and portfolios of companies and artisans. Not long before he passed, Ser Jacopo’s Giancarlo Guidi was considering this same question. To try to solve it, he turned to a curious source: mathematics. Math is hardly sn alien subject to pipe-makers, but Guidi was more specifically interested in the mathematics of Renaissance polymath Luca Pacioli. Divina Proportione was one of Pacioli’s masterworks, a study of mathematical proportions in contexts such as geometry, art, and architecture, with a large section of the book devoted to the phenomenon of the golden ratio—or, as he termed it, “da divina proportione” (English: “the divine proportion”). For further information on this phenomenon, I would invite readers to turn to more comprehensive sources; what matters here is that Guidi employed the golden ratio as a means to fine tune the dimensions of his Divina Proportione pipes, chasing a form of perfection that has captivated thinkers since at least the days of Euclid. Very few of these pipes have ever been made, with each bearing an additional silver “Φ”—the mathematical symbol for the golden ratio—on their stems. This one is a stout, sandblasted, Maxima grade billiard,  taking its divine proportions to even greater heights.

-J.M.

The condition is good. Some rim darkening.

 

Details:

Length: 6.8″ / 172.7mm

Bowl Width: 0.78 / 19.81mm

Bowl Depth: 1.77″ / 44.95mm

Weight: 3.1oz / 88g