I am Giacomo Penzo an Industrial Designer born in Vicenza on the 08th of August 1991. I am a very curious person: I love beautiful and genuine things that life offers us, the real things that preserve a tradition and a noble character like a pipe.
I‘ve been interested in pipe smoking from 2009 and with some friends I began to get closer to the slow-smoking-world so I‘ve inquired about the methods of tasting tobacco and therefore also to the pipe. It was a love at first sight: its use, its rituals involved me so much that during my university studies I spent for the pipe a lot of my free time. In a short time I achieved a lot of experience and I always led to manual work too so I began to make some pipes in the garage of my home where I have access to a real DIY workshop, set up by my father and my grandfather.
The pipemaking involved me and totally devoted myself to it with great interest and curiosity. The practice, my university studies, the web with FLP Community, the events, my visits to artisans workshops, the Pipa Club Vicenza friends of mine and my determination allowed me in a few years to achieve excellent results technical, practical and aesthetic. My pipes quickly aroused the interest of all over Italy pipe mokers, I began the first commissioned work, repairs and so the first successes.
In February 2015 I‘ve decided to start my business and I‘ve begun to make pipes for trade: a dream that comes true! So now I design and make handmade briar pipe and other woods.
My Product Design degree let me to have a very pragmatic consideration of the pipe: first of all it is a tool that has to work efficiently, be aesthetic and be smoked optimally at the same time. A pipe project has a very straight path of parameters to follow for materials and technical-productive aspects.
I make especially classic shapes because of their functionality and evergreen style. They are made first of all through the medium of a lathe, then a disk and finally the mouthpiece is cut and worked handmade starting from the board.
Despite my preference for classic pipes, I like making no conventional shapes following the Danish School method. First of all I give them the shape on the disk intensifying the wood grain, then I pierce it, cut the mouthpiece and I finish off the pipe.
The materials I use are briar, corbezzolo, olive wood for the head; hard rubber, cumberland or methacrylate for the mouthpiece and boxwood, palm, white walnut, corno, bamboo for the inserts.
I work for specific commissions too: after deciding the shape and the materials I make the pipe following the preferences of the client. I sometimes clean, restore and replace mouthpieces.

Giacomo Penzo