Artebano

Artebano is the name of a small pipe workshop that operated for many years in Bologna's historic center, and of the pipes that workshop produced. While most well-known names in Italian pipe making grew through export, Artebano stayed at city scale, its production never reaching beyond pipe smokers in and around Bologna. Because of this, rather than gaining nationwide fame, the brand remained a name known to a narrow circle.

Origin of the Name and Changes of Hands

Where the workshop's name comes from is not settled in the sources. According to one account, "Artebano" was inherited not from those who later took over the shop but from an earlier owner. In Italian sources, meanwhile, the same word appears as the name of the father of Bolognese pipe maker Alberto Bonfiglioli: the place where Bonfiglioli learned pipe making in 1974 is recorded as his father Artebano's workshop in Bologna. Bonfiglioli began producing under his own surname after his father's death in 1978. Both accounts arrive at the same point: Artebano is not a brand founded and carried on by a single master, but a workshop identity that lived on in Bologna through changes of hands.

The workshop's final period is associated with the name Franco Maccaferri. Maccaferri produced hand-shaped pipes here, closing his shop for health reasons around 2005-2006; records indicate he died in the summer of 2008. Since this date of death rests on a single source, it is not given here as certain.