Fassi (Angelo Fassi)

Fassi is the brand of pipes produced by Italian maker Angelo Fassi (b. 1958) at his one-man workshop in the town of Appiano Gentile, in the province of Como. Fassi's principal profession is medicine; after training in medical school he specialized in dentistry and spent most of his working life in endodontics (root canal treatment). He came to the bench as he neared fifty: he has been making pipes since 2010 and is said to produce around fifty pieces a year.

From Medicine to the Bench

His relationship with the pipe goes back much further. At fourteen, he was given the Savinelli pipe his father had bought hoping it would help him quit cigarettes — an aim it never achieved, and the pipe ended up with the son. During the years he lived in Monza, regular visits to one of the town's now-closed tobacconists nourished his interest. At sixteen, he also got the chance to tour the Caminetto manufactory in Cucciago, during the period when production was under the direction of Giuseppe "Peppino" Ascorti and Luigi Radice.

Decades passed before this interest turned into a craft. The turning point was attending a pipemaking course run by German maker Bertram Safferling in 2008. After the course he kept up his connection with Safferling, and set up his own workshop by taking over the machinery of a local maker who had just put down his bench.

Approach to Shape and Craftsmanship

Fassi thinks of his output in two strands. The first strand takes up the established shapes of the English and French shape charts; these, however, are not repeated exactly, but combined so that elements of separate shapes come together on a single body. Pairing the long shank typical of the Liverpool with a short conical mouthpiece on an apple bowl is a known example of this approach. The second strand consists of freeform (freehand) pieces that develop following the grain flow revealed as the block is worked; bands, rings, and unusual mouthpiece cross-sections are seen more often here. One design concern repeats across both strands: that the mouthpiece never touch the surface when the pipe is set down on a table. Most mouthpieces therefore carry a ring or flare that lifts the shank slightly for this purpose.

Briar for the bowls comes from Italian and Greek suppliers, chiefly Mimmo and Manno. Ebonite is the main material used for mouthpieces; depending on the design, horn and exotic woods also come into play (mouthpiece materials). While he also makes smooth-finished pipes, the brand's real signature is sandblasting (surface finishes): a deep, sharply defined texture is sought, and on some pieces only part of the surface is sandblasted. Production remains part-time; Fassi has said he plans to move to full-time bench work once he retires from dentistry.

The Italian Master Circle

Fassi's craft matured through the ties he built with Italy's master circle; his early guides included Gabriele Dal Fiume and Massimiliano "Il Duca" Rimensi. He has occasionally collaborated with Ukrainian maker Konstantin Shekita, and continues to exchange ideas with Brazilian makers Gustavo Cunha and Emanuel Queiroz. Among names he has only followed online he cites Maurizio Tombari and Paolo Becker of Le Nuvole. He is a member of the Accademia della Pipa, founded on 24 November 2020 and devoted to high-quality pipemaking in the Italian tradition; the academy's founding is credited to an initiative by Domenico "Mimmo" Romeo and Dal Fiume, with Gioacchino Sauro and Davide Iafisco also cited among the founding masters. He has passed on the support he received as well: former patient Roberto Franzini took up pipemaking at his encouragement and continues to produce under the name Franz Pipes.