Lorenzo VIP 81 Smooth Bent Plateau Dublin, 20th Century (Undetermined Era)

This reference example documents a smooth-finished bent Dublin from Lorenzo of Italy, catalogued within the firm's VIP line and carrying shape number 81. The Dublin is one of the classic chart shapes of the era, defined by a bowl whose walls flare outward as they rise, producing a distinctive conical chamber and a silhouette that reads lighter and more angular than the round-walled billiard. In this rendering the form is bent, curving the shank and stem downward for a lower hang, and the rim is finished in plateau — the natural, craggy outer crust of the burl left intact at the crown rather than cut smooth. Plateau tops are ordinarily reserved for blocks cut from the outer surface of the burl, and their presence pairs an untouched natural texture against the polished smooth body below. Lorenzo was one of the high-volume Italian pipe houses of the twentieth century, part of the broad Italian production tradition that made pipes accessible across many price tiers and export markets. Lines such as VIP were used to organise the factory's output, with numbered shapes allowing consistent reproduction of standard forms across the range; the 81 stamped designation places this piece within that internal shape system. Dating rests on the owner's attribution and the line and shape designations given in the source record. Lorenzo, like most volume Italian makers, did not employ a factory date-coding system, so individual pipes cannot be assigned a year of manufacture from their stampings alone; dating instead depends on line names, nomenclature style, and general production history. On that basis the record assigns an honest bracket of twentieth-century Italian manufacture, era otherwise undetermined, and the pipe is preserved here as a representative document of Lorenzo's numbered Dublin shapes and of the plateau-topped treatment within Italian factory production.