Aldo Velani

Aldo Velani is not the name of a real pipe maker but a brand name devised to offer Italian-made pipes to the American market. Most of the pipes have been made in Livorno, the port city in Tuscany, at the workshop of Cesare Barontini.

The brand is associated with the same factory's other signatures — Cesare, L'Artigiana, Stuart, and Cortina — which is why Aldo Velani is regarded not as an independent workshop but as a line an established Italian factory set aside for export.

Origin of the Name

Records indicate the brand was born in the early 1970s at the initiative of the New York-based importer Mastercraft. Having up to then brought in mostly French and English pipes, the company wanted to add an Italian-made line to its catalogue and contacted Barontini in Livorno. According to the account, the name was assembled from two names picked from a phone directory during the meeting in Italy — meaning "Aldo Velani" was a fictional identity from the start. This was a common practice among importers of the era: a name that sounded Italian to American buyers signaled the product's origin at a glance.

The Barontini family's history reaches back much further than the brand itself. Turildo Barontini opened a briar mill in Livorno in 1890, where at first only pipe blanks (ebauchons) were processed. The move to finished-pipe production came in 1925 under Bruno Barontini's management; the business, shut down for roughly seven years during the Second World War, reopened in 1946 under Bruno and Illico Barontini. Bruno's son Cesare Barontini took over the factory in 1955 and in later years shared its management with his daughters Barbara and Silvia.