Directory of Brazilian Pipe Brands

Directory of Brazilian Pipe Brands gathers, in alphabetical order, pipe names either born in Brazil or run by Brazilian makers. Pipemaking in the country continues less as a deep-rooted factory tradition than at the benches of a small number of mutually acquainted craftspeople; at these benches, a European sense of shape sits alongside local materials such as wood and horn. The entries below summarise only what has been recorded.

Brands

• Flávia Rodrigues — A brand carrying the name of a Brazilian maker who works with briar. She first sat at the bench simply to try it, and it was the desire to make and a closeness to nature that kept her at it. Her pipes are mostly traditional shapes bearing the traces of the Danish school; horn, the Brazil-native jabuticaba wood, and precious metals are used as accent materials. She learned to use bench tools and to advance her briar technique from her life partner Gustavo Cunha, maker of MarTelo pipes. Tom Eltang, Hans "Former" Nielsen, Becker, and Chris Asteriou — whose work she follows for questions of shape and proportion — are the sources of inspiration she names. She also experiments with freehand pieces, believing she can express her own culture more freely in unmolded shapes.

• Giulliano Spitaletti — A brand carrying the name of a Brazilian-born maker who later became a British citizen. Trained in architecture, he has practised various crafts, including jewellery-making, at his own workshop since his university years, and intensified this pursuit after settling in London. Inspired by his pipe-smoking father, and after smoking pipes himself for a while, he began pipemaking in England; traces of Renaissance art and classic English pipe shapes can be seen in his work.

• Ranieri — A pipe line named after the Ranieri Tabacaria tobacconist shop in São Paulo's Jardins district. Who made these pipes sold by the shop is unknown, and the line is considered to have gone out of production. No other recorded information exists regarding the maker, period, or model.