Savinelli Punto Oro 4003 Smooth Straight Billiard Oval Shank Estate Pipe

SAVINELLI, a shield with an S, a four-digit 4003 and ITALY, all stamped on the shank. This is a Savinelli Punto Oro straight billiard with an oval shank, a smooth finish and a small gold-coloured dot on the side of its tapered vulcanite stem.

The stem has no filter and ends in a fishtail mouthpiece. The shield and the number read clearly, ITALY is readable, and the SAVINELLI line is a little faint toward its end.

In 1876 Achille Savinelli Sr. opened a tobacco shop in Milan, and in 1890 his son Carlo took it over and ran it for about fifty years. Pipe making came with the next Achille: in 1948 Achille Savinelli Jr. started producing pipes under the family name. Accounts of the start differ: one names Amleto Pome and Mario Vettoruzzo, another Enea Buzzi at Brebbia. In 1953 Savinelli and Buzzi went separate ways, and Brebbia carried on as a brand of its own. Savinelli pipes have been made in Italy ever since, and the family is now in its fourth generation with Giancarlo Savinelli.

THE MARKS

- SAVINELLI, stamped along the shank
- A shield with an S, Savinelli's crest, on the shank
- A small second mark next to the shield (its meaning is not known)
- 4003, the shape number
- ITALY
- A gold-coloured dot on the side of the stem

Punto Oro stems carry a brass dot, and this stem carries a small gold-coloured dot. When the line began is told in two ways. In 2024 Savinelli's own Paolo Tamborini said the firm started producing Punto Oro in the 1950s; another source calls it the first pipe made after the factory opened in 1958.

Savinelli first used four-digit shape codes and later moved to three-digit ones; a pipe once coded 1011, for example, became the 111 billiard. The four-digit form on this shank belongs to that earlier numbering. No shape name is known for 4003 itself, so the shape is described here from the pipe.

A billiard has a cylindrical bowl at a right angle to a straight shank. On this one the bowl stands 45 mm high and 35 mm wide, a little taller than it is wide, and the shank is oval, flattened at the sides.

The finish is smooth and glossy. Grain lines run across the bowl and along the shank, and birdseye dots show on the sides of the bowl. Please see the photographs for the rim and the chamber.

Condition: pre-smoked, in very good condition.

THE MEASUREMENTS

- Length: 140 mm (5.6 in)
- Bowl height: 45 mm (1.8 in)
- Bowl width: 35 mm (1.4 in)
- Chamber diameter: 20 mm (0.8 in)
- Chamber depth: 40 mm (1.6 in)
- Weight: 31 g (1.1 oz)

Ships from the Faridunhill archive. Worldwide shipping and professional sanitation on every estate pipe.

SKU: 277