SAMANDA Old Briar 104 by Savinelli, Mid-to-Late 20th Century Italian Estate

This reference example documents a briar tobacco pipe marked SAMANDA Old Briar, bearing the shape number 104 and attributed to Savinelli of Italy. The pipe entered the archive as an Italian estate piece, meaning it saw service with a previous owner before being catalogued here. Savinelli occupies a foundational place in Italian pipe history. SAMANDA belongs to this family of Savinelli-associated markings, with the Old Briar designation identifying the specific line under which this example was finished and sold. The number 104 stamped on the shank follows the numeric shape-coding convention that Savinelli applied across its production, where each number corresponds to a fixed shape in the factory's chart. Such numbers are valuable to researchers because they allow an individual pipe to be matched against period catalogues regardless of the sub-brand under which it was issued. Dating rests on the combined weight of the markings rather than a factory date code, since Savinelli, in common with nearly all Italian makers, did not stamp its pipes with year indicators. The SAMANDA sub-brand identity, the Old Briar line name, and the Savinelli shape number together place the pipe within the broad span of the firm's twentieth-century sub-brand production. On that basis the archive assigns an honest bracket of the mid-to-late twentieth century, with the attribution resting on the owner's statement and the stampings as read.