Paolo Becker

Paolo Becker is the name of the handmade pipe brand he founded in Rome together with his father, Fritz Becker, and which has carried his surname since 1979. The father-and-son workshop operated on a scale entirely different from Italian pipe making's large production houses: output never rose to factory level, every piece passed through the same hands from start to finish, and the brand cannot be placed within a single school.

Paolo Becker died in December 2014; the workshop is carried on by his son, Federico Becker.

Fritz Becker

The brand's founder, Fritz Becker, was born in Vienna to a Jewish family and was forced to leave Austria in the late 1930s. After the war ended he settled in Rome, where he lived until his death in 1991. Becker, who spoke several languages, is said to have worked as a translator for British intelligence during the war years and to have later represented the World Jewish Congress before the Vatican; both accounts rest on a single narrative.

Becker, whose main pursuit was painting and sculpture, moved into pipe making following a habit of reworking the pipes he himself used. His first attempts took shape in the attic in Rome that he also used as a painting studio.