Ser Jacopo pipes are made in a workshop in the same building Giancarlo founded Mastro da Paja some thirty years ago. They have made a few changes - a drying loft for the briar, extended the rear section and added a high capacity vacuum system. Other than the years when Mastro moved out into the countryside, Giancarlo has done all his great pipe making and designing within these walls. Only the highest quality materials are used in the creation of these exquisite smoking pipes. Years before the briar is ready to be turned into a pipe, raw briar burls are boiled and slowly cured for several years, after which they are cut into the large blocks of "extra-extra plateaux" - the Holy Grail of the pipe world.

It‘s from these large, grain filled blocks of briar that all Ser Jacopo pipes are made. In years of experience and research in the creation of fine smoking pipes, Guidi recognized the need to develop a new form with unique characteristics, as well as the elegance of design and prestige desired by the most discriminating smoker. It is his intention to offer smokers a new object - a pipe with it‘s own personality, refined in form and detail -. For this reason Guidi follow, with exacting precision, the total process of creating each and every pipe.

Beginning with the careful selection and curing of the finest briar; to the final phases of staining and polishing. It is difficult to explain the extreme attention given to the production of so precious an object. The discriminating smoker will recognize and appreciate the pride of craftsmanship and artistic endeavor which Giancarlo Guidi have realized in the birth of the Ser Jacopo dalla Gemma. Ser Jacopo is Giancarlo‘s passion. The quality and style is like no other pipe manufacturer today.
A fascinating discovery: the pipe which does not yet hot.
In 1982 Professor Enrico Fabri discovered a four page document which contained several inventions which seemed like somethinh created by Leonardo da Vinci.

Numerous studies were carried out on these four pages: on the pigments, the materials and the writing style; a carbon 14 test was also carried out to scintifically determine the outhorship and age of the document: a Leonardo da Vinci from 1510.

Among the studies contained in the document there is one which mentions a specific request by Louis XII, the King of France: a pipe which would remain as cool as possible.

Leonardo da Vinci devised a twin-walled terracotta pipe which was cooled by the air circulating in the cavity.

Now Ser Jacopo has risen to the challenge of creating Leonardo da Vinci‘s project and make it tangible using the same tecnichal means but in a different material: briar.

And this has led to the creation of "Leonardo", the pipe that doe not yet hot, an object rich in history and genius.