Cellini

Cellini is a name that covers two separate stories at once in the pipe world. Today the brand names a line carried in the catalog of the Brebbia workshop in Italy's Varese province; for much of the twentieth century, though, it was the name of a pipe shop and repair workshop operating in Chicago. The two branches are linked through trade, but they were never the same business.

Brebbia and the Italian Cellini

The Italian side of the brand traces back to a manufacturing partnership formed in 1947 by Enea Buzzi and Achille Savinelli in the town of Brebbia, near Varese; the name comes from that town. The partnership broke up in 1953, and Buzzi continued his own production under the MPB (Manifattura Pipe Brebbia) stamp; records suggest the legal completion of the split took until 1956. The diamond-shaped emblem was renewed in 1968, and the company's official title changed to Pipe Brebbia in 1976. For the path the other side of the partnership took, see the entry for Savinelli.

Within this production, the Cellini name covers two distinct things. In the community it is mostly counted as one of Brebbia's second lines: rusticated, two-tone painted classic Italian shapes finished with an acrylic mouthpiece. The block-letter Cellini stamp, meanwhile, is said to have been used chiefly on one-off bodies remaining in the factory. Brebbia states that the briar it brings into the workshop is cured there for years before use.