Lorenzo Savona Standard Rusticated Bent Billiard, Diamond Shank (738), era undetermined

This reference example is a bent billiard from Lorenzo of Italy, catalogued under the Savona Standard line and carrying the shape number 738. The form pairs one of pipe making's most enduring silhouettes — the billiard, with its cylindrical bowl and classical proportions — with two distinguishing variations: a bend through the shank and stem, which lowers the bowl and shifts the pipe's weight toward the hand, and a diamond shank, whose four-faceted cross-section replaces the conventional round profile and lends the piece a crisper, more architectural line. The bowl carries a rusticated finish, the deliberately carved, textured surface treatment long favoured by Italian workshops both for its tactile grip and for its ability to dress whose grain does not merit a smooth presentation. Lorenzo stands among the sizeable Italian pipe manufacturers of the twentieth century, producing serially numbered factory pipes across a range of named lines for domestic and export markets. Line names drawn from Italian places — Savona is a port city on the Ligurian coast — were characteristic of the firm's cataloguing practice, with qualifying terms such as Standard distinguishing tiers within a line. The three-digit shape number recorded here, 738, reflects the factory-catalogue system by which such houses organised their output, allowing a given form to be reproduced consistently across production runs. Dating rests on the identification supplied with the piece rather than on any factory date-coding system, as Italian factory pipes of this class were not stamped with year codes in the manner of certain English marques. The combination of brand, line, and shape number places the pipe within Lorenzo's serial production, but without further documentary evidence the era of manufacture remains an open bracket, honestly recorded as undetermined. As an estate example, the pipe documents the rusticated diamond-shank bent billiard as executed by a major Italian factory workshop.