Franz Pipes (Roberto Franzini)

Franz Pipes is a small-scale brand run single-handedly by Italian maker Roberto Franzini. Franzini makes his pipes in a workshop set up in the garage of his home in Saronno, northwest of Milan; the work is part-time, and according to records annual output stays around fifty pieces.

The brand name comes not from the maker's surname but from the nickname "Franz," said to have also been carried by his father and grandfather. Sources give his birth year as 1982, in Domodossola, at the foot of the Alps in Piedmont.

Coming to the Bench

Franzini learned the craft not from a master but through his own trial and error; he began in 2012. He first gathered information from online videos and written sources, then acquired a few briar blocks and basic hand tools and set to work. He describes his early period as a learning process advanced by testing every step against failure. Living in a region with a long-established pipemaking tradition, northern Italy, sped up this process: he had the chance to visit nearby workshops, ask technical questions, and attend the events hosted by Savinelli and Brebbia to watch briar being worked up close.

Early on, a connection formed with another Italian maker whose actual profession was dentistry, Angelo Fassi. As the story goes, Franzini began looking into the matter after a colleague mentioned that a dentist he knew made pipes, and later learned that this person was Fassi; in Fassi's version, Franzini was one of his former patients and moved to the bench under his direct guidance. Sources agree that the two makers became friends in later years and kept up an exchange of ideas through mutual visits.