Il Duca (Massimiliano Rimensi)

Il Duca is the brand under which Massimiliano (Max) Rimensi makes his handmade Italian pipes. The brand takes its name not from the maker's own surname but from the history of the city where he was born: the word "Duca," a reference to the ducal family that ruled Ferrara through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, supplies both the label and the language of the workshop's grading system. The workshop today operates just north of Ferrara, in Stienta, in the province of Rovigo on the opposite bank of the Po river.

Grading by Noble Title

The most visible feature setting Il Duca apart from similar brands is that its quality tiers are referred to by title names. By the workshop's own definition, examples that are fully or partially sandblasted are marked Barone; pipes with flame grain, or ones that carry originality of shape without reaching the flawlessness the maker looks for, are marked Conte; and pieces showing both flame grain and bird's-eye together, whose shape and workmanship are considered complete, carry the Duca stamp.

One or more "D" letters added next to the stamp indicate a finer sub-grade within the same tier. In setting the grade, the quality of the wood and its grain pattern, how original the shape is, whether a spacer was used, the material of the mouthpiece, and general workmanship are all weighed together. For collectors, this system is considered the element that carries the brand's recognition, since it lets a pipe's standing be read at a glance.

The Maker's Path

Rimensi's interest in pipes goes back to 1990, the year he got his first pipe. Wood was not an unfamiliar material to him: starting at age fourteen, he had spent his summers in his uncle's carpentry workshop, and it was on that same bench that he made his first attempts at pipe making. Even though the early results were not satisfying, the pursuit took hold. In the years that followed he gathered his observations by visiting whatever briar cutting mills, workshops, and pipe makers he could reach, and along the way put together a notebook of his own shape sketches. Learning by moving from one maker to another is a common form of apprenticeship in postwar Italian handmade pipe making.

Materials and Construction

Blocks are chosen from three separate regions of Italy and seasoned for at least two to three years before shaping. Alongside briar, morta is also used. Acrylic, vulcanite, horn, and Cumberland alternate as mouthpiece materials; boxwood, silver, and bamboo, meanwhile, are mostly used for the spacers between shank and mouthpiece. This interest in material variety goes together with a look that emphasizes color contrast on both smooth and sandblasted surfaces. Production, according to records, continues as a limited number of pipes made by a single pair of hands; there is no information suggesting the workshop has moved to series production.