L'Anatra

L'Anatra is an Italian handmade pipe workshop that has worked in the Adriatic coastal city of Pesaro since 1998. Its full name is L'Anatra dalle Uova d'Oro: in the Italian telling of the tale known in English as "the goose that laid the golden eggs," the hero is a duck, and the brand takes its name from there. The workshop's pieces are recognizable from a distance by the small silver duck's head inlaid into the mouthpiece.

Workshop and Production

The founding year is 1998; records state Massimo Palazzi started the business that autumn, with Andrea Pascucci joining the bench in 2000. The workshop has operated in Pesaro since its founding. By the brand's own figures, around two thousand pipes are made a year; this scale falls well short of the large Italian series-production firms and places the workshop on the artisan pipe side. Products reach the American and Asian markets alongside Europe; recognition in the American market arrived noticeably later than in Europe.

The brand states it was the subject of "pipe of the year"-type selections around the Accademia Internazionale della Pipa circle in 2004, in an American magazine's selection in 2005, and in a German catalog in 2007. The details of these selections have not been independently confirmed.