A Conversation With Maurizio Tombari: Founder of Le Nuvole

A Conversation With Maurizio Tombari is the name of an interview conducted by email between Italian pipe maker Maurizio Tombari and Bear Graves, published on Smokingpipes.com; in archives it is referenced under the title "Conversation With A Conversation With Maurizio Tombari." The interview's own stated date is March 2006; this date has not been confirmed by an independent record.

Because the interview itself is copyrighted, only the facts it contains have been compiled below, and these have been cross-checked as far as possible against the workshop's own records.

Tombari's Background and Le Nuvole

Tombari was born in 1953 in Pesaro, and in 1978 earned a diploma in painting from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Urbino. In the interview he recounts acquiring his first pipe in the summer of that same year, a few months before he began working at the Mastro de Paja workshop. The brand's official biography gives 1978-1996 as a single period: during these years he worked both at Mastro de Paja and at Ser Jacopo, while also pursuing painting and interior work; which years belong to which workshop cannot be disentangled from the records. He founded his own brand, Le Nuvole, in 1996; from 1998 onward the brand's website became the workshop's main channel of communication with the outside world. Production has been kept small from the start: while the workshop's current statement points to one hundred to one hundred twenty pipes a year, other records give figures exceeding two hundred; the common point is that the number has never exceeded a few hundred in any period.