Cellini

Cellini is a name that covers two separate stories at once in the pipe world. Today the brand names a line carried in the catalog of the Brebbia workshop in Italy's Varese province; for much of the twentieth century, though, it was the name of a pipe shop and repair workshop operating in Chicago. The two branches are linked through trade, but they were never the same business.

Brebbia and the Italian Cellini

The Italian side of the brand traces back to a manufacturing partnership formed in 1947 by Enea Buzzi and Achille Savinelli in the town of Brebbia, near Varese; the name comes from that town. The partnership broke up in 1953, and Buzzi continued his own production under the MPB (Manifattura Pipe Brebbia) stamp; records suggest the legal completion of the split took until 1956. The diamond-shaped emblem was renewed in 1968, and the company's official title changed to Pipe Brebbia in 1976. For the path the other side of the partnership took, see the entry for Savinelli.

Within this production, the Cellini name covers two distinct things. In the community it is mostly counted as one of Brebbia's second lines: rusticated, two-tone painted classic Italian shapes finished with an acrylic mouthpiece. The block-letter Cellini stamp, meanwhile, is said to have been used chiefly on one-off bodies remaining in the factory. Brebbia states that the briar it brings into the workshop is cured there for years before use.

The Cellini Pipe Shop in Chicago

The American branch of the name belongs to a Chicago shop whose corporate title was Victory Pipe Craftsmen Inc.; the business became known in the community by the "Cellini" name on its storefront. Founder Arthur "Art" Silber was in time joined by his wife Ruth, his daughter Bobbe, and his sons Stuart and Elliot. The opening date is inconsistent across sources: one gives 1927, another 27 April 1929.

The shop earned its real reputation not from the pipes it sold but from the sheer volume of repair work it took on. Reported figures put the workshop's throughput at up to two thousand pipes a week on behalf of roughly twelve hundred stores across the country; the bulk of the work consisted of remaking mouthpieces along with repairing meerschaum and antique pieces. The keyless four-jaw chuck Silber developed for this work allowed a mouthpiece, whatever its shape, to be locked onto the lathe within seconds; it is this setup that made same-while-you-wait repairs possible for customers.

Chicago Production, Stampings, and Two Logos

The shop also had its own bench; Silber employed salaried pipe makers. The best known among them was Primo Polidori, former foreman of Chicago's Dr. Grabow/Linkman factory. The finish favored a natural surface over lacquer or varnish, and putty fill was not used; a body that came out flawed was either reshaped or set aside as a spare part for repairs. The workshop's freehand bodies and made-to-order one-offs are of interest to collectors today.

The customary stamp on Chicago-made pipes reads in script "Cellini" with the block-letter word "ORIGINAL" beneath it; examples bearing only the brand name are also seen. The name was also engraved on silver or 12-14 karat gold shank ferrules. After the founder's death, his children carried on the business; sources diverge on the closing date, giving anywhere from the late 1980s to 28 February 1991. Today the script logo belongs to the Silber family in Illinois, while the block-letter version is used by Brebbia. What links the two branches is trade itself: the Chicago shop also sold imported pipes alongside its own products, and Brebbia is cited as its chief supplier of those.