Savinelli Club 104 Sandblast Straight Billiard Estate Pipe

SAVINELLI and CLUB on the shank, and on the silver mount 925 in a lozenge over SAVINELLI and STERLING SILVER: this is a Savinelli Club, a straight sandblasted billiard with a sterling silver army mount and a tapered Cumberland stem cut to a fishtail mouthpiece, bored for a 6 mm filter.

It is pre-smoked, in good condition, with darkness on the rim, and the chamber still carries a cake layer that needs more reaming. The silver marks read clearly; SAVINELLI on the shank is worn at its first letters, CLUB is soft, and of the shape number only the last digit, a 4, can be read in the photographs.

The Savinelli story starts with tobacco, not pipes. In 1876 Achille Savinelli Sr. opened a tobacco shop in Milan, and from 1890 his son Carlo ran it for about fifty years. Pipe making came in 1948, when Achille Jr. began production in the Varese region - with Amleto Pome and Mario Vettoruzzo and 15 employees in one account, in association with Enea Buzzi at Brebbia in another; the two accounts stand side by side. In 1953 the partnership with Buzzi ended, Brebbia went on as its own brand, and Savinelli worked from its own factory at Molina di Barasso. The pipes have been made in Italy ever since, and the house is now in the hands of the fourth generation, Giancarlo Savinelli.

THE MARKS

- SAVINELLI / CLUB stamped on the shank
- a shape number on the shank, only its last digit 4 legible
- 925 in a lozenge / SAVINELLI on the silver army mount
- STERLING SILVER on the silver army mount

A shape 104 appears on Savinelli's own shape chart, which gives the numbers without names. Savinelli used four-digit shape numbers on its early pipes and later moved to three-digit numbers, so if the number is 104, as noted when the pipe came in, it belongs to the later three-digit system; no narrower date is claimed.

A billiard is the plainest of the classic shapes: a round bowl standing upright over a straight shank, here 44 mm high and 33 mm wide. An army mount is a metal ferrule over the shank end; on this pipe the ferrule is sterling silver. The stem is Cumberland, a swirled brown and black material, and it tapers evenly to the bit, where it ends in a fishtail.

The finish is a sandblast with a deep, ridged texture over the bowl and the shank, where blasting has worn away the softer wood and left the harder growth rings standing.

Condition: pre-smoked, in good condition, with rim darkness; the chamber needs more of its cake layer removed.

THE MEASUREMENTS

- Length: 145 mm (5.71 in)
- Bowl height: 44 mm (1.73 in)
- Bowl width: 33 mm (1.30 in)
- Chamber diameter: 20 mm (0.79 in)
- Chamber depth: 37 mm (1.46 in)
- Weight: 35 g (1.23 oz)

Ships from the Faridunhill archive. Worldwide shipping and professional sanitation on every estate pipe. SKU: 491