362. Gianluigi Fiori, Nassau Street’s Pipe Sommelier
It is with considerable excitement that I introduce this morning one of Kapp & Peterson's shining stars, Gianluigi Fiori. You have seen his photography and videography on the internet in Peterson's social media outlets for a while now, but that's only a part of his extraordinary talent and story as a lifelong pipeman, designer and reader. He also may be the only person since the days of Frederick Kapp, Charles Peterson and Alfred Kapp to have worked in both the retail shop and the factory! 1. THE LITERARY JOURNEY INTO PIPES I've been smoking a pipe for thirty-five years although I'm only forty-eight. When I was about eleven years old my father began to travel for work, and returning from his travels he brought me books—that’s how I came to read Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, J. R. R. Tolkien, Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Robinson Crusoe. Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift (another great Irish author), is another book that’s made a lasting impression on me—in fact, I did an illustration for our beloved Sykes Wilford: Jonathan Swift in the Factory (Collection of Sykes Wilford) It was Daniel Defoe’s Crusoe, however, that first made a deep impression on me, because he risks his life trying to save a barrel of pipe tobacco, which he then lovingly dried with great care. I thought damn the pipe and tobacco must be very important to Crusoe, and so I built a small pipe with a river reed:* Gianluigi’s River Reed Pipe “But I think I was never more vain of my own performance, or more joyful for anything I found out, than for my being able to make a tobacco-pipe; and though it was a very ugly, clumsy thing when it was done, and only burned red, like other earthenware, yet as it was hard and firm, and would draw the smoke, I was exceedingly comforted with it.” –Ch 10, Robinson Crusoe The river reed pipe, however, burned too easily and stank. I couldn't afford tobacco so I crumbled cigarettes or used the cigar butts I found. But one day at a Scout meeting a friend's dad arrived puffing a pipe, from from which came the best aroma I had ever smelled. He worked at the NATO base where I grew up in Sardinia. He was a civilian but had access to the wholesale PX shop on the American military base and bought 12 oz cans of Captain Black Royal. The fact that they were so big allowed my friend to steal some tobacco one week from his father for me. And that’s how I started smoking the pipe. Gianluigi’s 80s P-Lip I’m not proud of it, but I confess that I stole my first real pipe, a Peterson 80s, P-Lip, without knowing anything about Peterson or briar or the P-Lip. It was just a tempting opportunity and I didn’t resist. It was my first real pipe. And then at sixteen, I was finally able to to buy the STG's Clan and Scandinavik and…