Don Carlos

Don Carlos is the handmade-pipe workshop Bruto Sordini and his wife Rosaria Sordini founded in 1990 in the town of Cagli, in the mountainous region of central Italy. The brand is considered one of the workshops that emerged from the Italian workshop tradition shaped around Pesaro and quickly established its own shape language. Production continues today at family scale, in pieces worked one by one.

The Founder's Path

Bruto Sordini was born in Cagli and turned to pipe making while studying law; he chose to build his career at the workbench rather than in law. In 1974 he became one of the first craftsmen taken on at Giancarlo Guidi's Mastro de Paja workshop, and consolidated his bench experience in this environment. After Guidi's departure for a new venture, he was among the founding partners of the brand Ser Jacopo that was then established. At the end of a partnership of several years, wanting to apply his own design approach freely, he left and founded Don Carlos.

Sordini's work after 1990 moves between two poles: on one side, measured, classically proportioned shapes; on the other, freely designed pieces distinguished by unusual lines. Among the workshop's occasionally repeated named lines are Kronos, said according to records to refer to a string quartet, and the Melos series, adorned with silver and gold bands. A serious motorcycle accident Sordini suffered is said to have interrupted production for a while; upon returning to the workshop, he is reported to have moved to a slower work pace, devoting more time to each individual piece.