Bartoli

Bartoli is a pipe workshop founded in Massa Marittima, in the province of Grosseto, in Tuscany's Maremma region. It takes its name from Pietro Bartoli, who learned the trade as a young man in the twenties and later took charge of the workshop. The brand never became one of the great Italian factories; instead it built its reputation by keeping an unbroken local craft tradition alive.

A Craft Rooted in Ghirlanda

The region's pipe trade predates the Bartoli name. In Ghirlanda, a hamlet of Massa Marittima, cutting masters worked to turn briar root into rough blanks; local sources say the first such workshop was run by Giuseppe Petrocchi. Pietro Bartoli took over this business and, in 1947, moved production from cutting blanks to finished pipes. The company's founding in its present form is generally dated to the 1950s; because sources give different years between 1947 and 1950, a precise date is hard to pin down.

Ghirlanda's rise as a cutting center is a matter of geography. The Tuscan coastal strip has historically been one of Europe's few source regions for briar, the raw material of pipe making; finding it just a few kilometers away made it easier for a long-lived production line to take root in a small town. For the general characteristics of the material, see briar.