Brebbia 188 ORO (8487) Smooth Billiard Estate Pipe - Acrylic Fishtail Stem, 9mm Filter

The stem on this one does something most Brebbia mouthpieces do not: it grows before it steps down. Where the acrylic meets the shank, it starts at the shank's own diameter, swells outward through roughly the first third of its length, then drops at a saddle to a standard fishtail bit. That is the detail worth looking at twice.

Stamped on the shank, read directly off the pipe by the seller: Brebbia 188 ORO (8487). The bowl is a smooth straight billiard, but with a fuller wall than a strict billiard carries, easing toward a brandy-shape curve rather than meeting the shank at a hard right angle. A diamond logo in brass is inlaid at the stem, the mark the seller identifies as the house's own.

Brebbia's factory stands at Bosco Grosso di Brebbia, in the Varese district, founded in 1947 by Enea Buzzi together with Achille Savinelli. For its first years the pipes went out under the Savinelli name alone, an arrangement that ran exclusively to 1953 with the name rights extending to 1956. That year the two men split: Savinelli built his own plant at Barasso, and Buzzi kept the Brebbia works, the firm continuing first under the MPB brand. In 1968 the MPB diamond gave way to a simpler gold-outlined diamond stem logo carrying the single word Brebbia, the branding the house has used since. Luciano Buzzi has managed the factory from the 1990s onward.

THE MARKS
- Shank stamp: Brebbia 188 ORO (8487), as read by the seller
- Diamond logo inlaid in brass at the stem

The "188" and "ORO" are quoted here exactly as stamped.

A billiard with a brandy-shape lean is not two shapes fighting each other so much as one shape softened. The straight billiard is the trade's baseline: vertical bowl, level bottom, shank running true off the heel. A brandy fills that same silhouette out - fuller shoulders, a rounder transition where bowl meets shank - the way a brandy snifter's bowl reads fuller than a plain tumbler. Held in the hand it sits the same as any straight-shanked pipe: shank and stem in one line, meant to be gripped at the join rather than cradled, and it reads the same way on a rack, bowl forward.

The saddle-to-fishtail stem is a mechanical detail as much as a cosmetic one. A saddle step gives the stem a shoulder for the hand and the eye before the bit narrows; a fishtail slot spreads that narrowing bit into two soft points at the tip rather than a single button, distributing bite across a wider surface for a smoker who clenches. The swelling section ahead of the saddle on this stem is unusual - most saddle stems taper evenly rather than growing first - and it is the one shaping choice on this pipe that departs from Brebbia's typical stem work.

The briar is left in a smooth finish, without sandblast or rustication. Finish and grain beyond that: see the photographs.

A 9mm filter chamber runs through the shank and into the stem, sized for the standard 9mm charcoal or balsa filter element rather than a bore drilled for direct draw. The filter format was one Brebbia adopted for the northern European market, where filtered smoking is the norm rather than the exception.

Condition: presmoked, graded by the seller as very good.

THE MEASUREMENTS
- Length: 150.0mm
- Bowl height: 50.0mm
- Bowl width: 41.0mm
- Chamber diameter: 20.0mm
- Chamber depth: 43.0mm
- Weight: 55.0g

Ships from the Faridunhill / Pipe Collectors Encyclopedia archive. Worldwide shipping and professional sanitation on every estate pipe.

SKU: 427