Medaglia (Enrico Medaglia)

Medaglia is the name of a very small-scale handmade pipe output that Italian string-instrument maker Enrico Medaglia signs under his own name. Medaglia's primary trade is not pipes but instruments; pipes developed over the years as a second pursuit added alongside the bench of his own workshop. For this reason the brand is regarded less as a commercial pipe firm than as a signature under which a limited number of pieces from a single hand are gathered.

The Master and His Workshop

Enrico Medaglia was born in Milan on May 11, 1962. He graduated from the "Antonio Stradivari" International School of Violin Making in Cremona in 1980; during his studies he trained under leading masters of the period, chief among them Giobatta Morassi and Francesco Bissolotti. After graduating he worked for a time at Morassi's bench in Cremona, then in Lodi and Milan, before finally settling in Padua. His current workshop, called Liuteria Veneta, carries out the making and protective repair of violins, violas, cellos, double basses, and violas da gamba, as well as bow making, repair, and rehairing.

This background also explains the nature of his pipes. Instrument making is a craft that demands fine measurement, reading the grain of the wood, and hand finishing; the same habits are held to carry over into briar as well.

Production and Pipes

The one figure circulating in pipe literature is an output of roughly fifty pieces a year; this information rests on a single account and has not been independently confirmed. The same records state that the pipes are shaped entirely by hand, with no series molding or machine copying used, and that the stems are also prepared from a hard cast material resembling methacrylate. Among stem materials, this group is distinguished by giving a surface that, unlike ebonite, does not darken over time. Production at this scale is counted among the examples showing the continued weight of one-person workshops alongside factories in Italian pipe making; for the general framework of the subject, see a brief history of the Italian handmade pipe. Since the master's own promotional pages foreground his instrument making, it is not clear at what scale the pipe work continues today.

Confusion in Sources

Some archive pages devoted to the name Medaglia also carry, under the same heading, the profile of a second master: Enrico Marola, who began making pipes after meeting Bruto Sordini, the master behind the Don Carlos pipes, in 1998. That Marola lives in Vercelli and signs his pipes "Enricoro" rests on his own statement and has not been confirmed in another source. The two masters are independent of each other and share only their first name; the two should not be confused when scanning records.