Gamboni (Gian Maria Gamboni)

Gamboni is the brand under which Italian pipe maker Gian Maria Gamboni makes handmade pipes under his own name. Born in 1970 in Florence, Gamboni has spent most of his working life in Rome. He is a typical example of the one-person workshops that turn out a limited number of pieces a year: shape, size, and color are decided separately for each piece, and no two pipes are copies of one another.

Moving Into Pipe Making

Gamboni's acquaintance with pipes goes back to the 1990s; he was first a smoker, then a collector. His move into production began in the mid-2000s, with the contact he established with the Becker & Musicò workshop, then operating in Rome. He made his first pipe in 2007. The shape sense of the Paolo Becker line can be traced in Gamboni's early work; in this respect, the brand ties into the master-apprentice tradition of the Italian handmade pipe.

According to records, Gamboni left the engineering profession he had carried on until then in 2010 and moved into full-time pipe making. Sources do not agree on where he worked after this date: some records speak of an arrangement rotating between several Italian cities, others of engineering work continued abroad. For this reason the workshop is known not by a fixed address but directly by the maker's name.