Pipes and Men: an Essay on a Collection in Sarnano

A Gathering of Pipes and Men is a short essay by writer David Gerstel devoted to figural meerschaum pipes. The piece was published on 25 May 2023 in the long-read section of Italy-based Italics Magazine, and was picked up that same month among Pipedia's meerschaum entries.

It is neither a brand history nor a technical study; it is a personal piece that conveys a collector's view of his own objects through a literary frame. As such, it belongs to the narrative branch of pipe writing rather than the technical one.

Author and Place

According to the magazine's author note, Gerstel is a writer who came from Montreal, Canada and Vermont, USA to settle in Sarnano; he has also written, on invitation, for The New York Times opinion pages. The essay is signed from Sarnano and dated 22 May 2023.

Sarnano is a mountain town in Italy's Marche region, in the province of Macerata. It sits at an elevation of 539 metres and had a population of 3,268 as of the 2016 census; the town appears in the "Italy's Most Beautiful Villages" (I Borghi più belli d'Italia) list. The essay is set entirely in this town, in a house in the historic centre — the collection, in other words, is never separated from the place it belongs to.