Sauro Pipe

Sauro Pipe is the brand of pipes produced single-handedly by Italian maker Gioacchino Sauro (b. 1959) at his workshop in Palermo, Sicily. Sauro came to pipe making from a completely different profession: he studied agricultural science, worked for five years as a researcher at the University of Palermo, then worked as an agricultural consultant and took a post in the region's plant-health unit. The brand rests not on a factory but on the one-man workshop this second pursuit grew into.

The Move into Making

By Sauro's own account, his first attempts at pipe making came in 2009, self-taught; sources date his turning it into a serious pursuit to 2011. The decisive figure in this period was Carlo Riggio, owner of Palermo's established tobacconist Tabaccheria Riggio; Sauro gained his first technical knowledge from conversations with him and from publications devoted to the subject. The suggestion that he needed to find a master also came from Riggio. In 2012 he approached Italian maker Mimmo Romeo and was accepted as an apprentice in his workshop, where he also met Brazilian maker Eder Mathias.

The event that introduced Sauro to a wider audience was his participation in the 2014 Chicago Pipe Show. The same year, together with Romeo, he visited the workshop of Danish master Tom Eltang. Another stop that broadened his technical range was the few days he spent in 2019 with Gabriele dal Fiume, where he learned the hand-drilling technique the Danish school popularized in the 1950s and 1960s. The workshop's turn toward asymmetric shapes considered freehand dates from after this point.

Teaching and the Accademia Della Pipa

In 2020, when in-person training halted due to the pandemic, Sauro, together with Romeo, dal Fiume and Davide Iafisco, set up an online teaching structure. Eder Mathias also joined as an instructor at the Accademia della Pipa, founded in November 2020. Between January and June 2021, twelve technical sessions were held, and around thirty technical documents were prepared and distributed to students. In 2022 Sauro was also admitted to the Confrérie des Maîtres-Pipiers, founded in Saint-Claude in 1966; he received the title "confrère pipier" at the association's 143rd meeting on 14 October.

Stamp and Grading

The brand uses no grading system; recognition rests entirely on the stamp. The stamp consists of two elements: the word "SAURO" in capital letters, and a wave line inspired by Hokusai's engraving "The Great Wave off Kanagawa." Because the wave was hand-carved on early pipes, no two pieces were exactly alike; later production moved to an engraving machine. From 2017 on, the handwritten phrase "handmade Italy" has also been added to the stamp.

Shape and Surface

There is no recurring shape sequence in Sauro's output; by his own account, he rarely returns to a design he has found satisfying in later pipes. Work begins with a drawing, and briar blocks suited to the shape chosen from the sketches accumulated in his notebooks are set aside. Following a habit he picked up from Romeo, he works on several pipes at once. On the surface, dark stain is avoided in favor of oils that bring out the wood's own grain contrast; Sauro says he has made it a principle never to use more than three colors on a pipe and to build the shape with as few lines as possible. This scale and working arrangement places the brand within the definition of the artisan pipe.

There are also one-off pieces made for particular occasions. Among them are the Nefertiti, inspired by the Egyptian queen's silhouette and repeated several times; the Siciliana, prepared in 2019 for Tabaccheria Riggio's hundredth anniversary; and the Lunanera, made from larch wood in 2022 for a pipe club in Brunico.