Bacchiega (Giacomo Bacchiega)

Bacchiega is the name Italian maker Giacomo Bacchiega uses on his pipes. Bacchiega has no commercial workshop; he makes pipes not to order but as a pursuit he carries on at his own bench. The term "private maker," used for this type of craftsman, describes someone who keeps the work as a personal pursuit rather than a livelihood, and does not take the product beyond a narrow circle.

Bacchiega is known in the community more for his collecting and enthusiast following than for his own pipemaking; he is recorded as concentrating his interest on the work of makers coming out of Castello, Baldi, and the Danish school.

The Lombardy Framework

What really places Bacchiega in context is the geography his name is associated with. Northern Lombardy was throughout the twentieth century one of the centers of gravity of Italian pipemaking; the area around Varese and Cantù, in the province of Como, are counted as the two hubs that produced the country's best-known workshops. Cantù holds a distinct place on this map. Before pipes, the town was known for furniture and woodworking; the accumulated skill of craftsmen versed in hand tools is regarded as the ground that made it easy for pipe workshops to take root there. Castello was founded in this town by Carlo Scotti in 1947 and is considered one of the workshops that set the standard for postwar Italian handmade pipes. Bacchiega's affinity for Castello is likewise mostly told through this town; it is noted that a branch of his family settled in Cantù in 1930, moving from a mountainous area near the Swiss border. For the general framework of the region's production tradition, see the entry on the short history of the Italian handmade pipe.