The numbers of men who have carved at Ser Jacopo since the company's inception in 1982 are legion, and their names could form a virtual "Who's Who" of the Pesaro Italian pipe world. The Rinaldo brothers, Bruto Sordini, Massimo Palazzi, Maurizio Tombari, Franco Rossi, and Gianni Imperatori would be fine examples of the talent that has crafted Ser Jacopo pipes. But the heart of the operation has always centered around one man, a man credited with starting a neo-classical shaping revolution that would rival the Danish movement of earlier decades. That man, of course, is Giancarlo Guidi, and his school bears the name of his home: Pesaro.

Maestro Guidi was born in 1944, and studied design at the notable Mengaroni School of Art in Pesaro. Though Giancarlo started his "hands on" art working with enamels and ceramics, he found himself quickly drawn to briar as a medium of expression, and 1970 found him working for Moretti and Raganella. Giancarlo proved himself to be a prodigy, learning and then mastering the workaday "nuts and bolts" aspects of pipe crafting in short order. Once the basics were in place, his designer's mind started to ask questions. "If striking grain enhances any shape, why do we carve pipes ignoring that aspect, just letting the grain of a given pipe fall where it may?" The artist with Giancarlo could not help but look at standard shapes, and imagine the other possibilities that could be coaxed out of the classics. Giancarlo came to one inescapable conclusion. His questions could not be answered, nor would his visions become reality within a highly mechanized environment. His present employer was geared toward machine shaping and high production. Giancarlo's pipes would require hand shaping, greater time analyzing a block of briar, and the freedom to experiment with neo-classical takes on standard shapes. In short, he needed his own place and in 1972, Giancarlo co-founded the tremendously successful Mastro de Paja firm.

Over the next nine years Giancarlo's neo-classical shaping took wing. Almost every conceivable English standard shape found a new, eloquent voice or, in many cases, voices. An example that readily comes into mind would be that of a rhodesian. By varying bowl to shank ratios, placement of the shape's signature beading, the height of the bowl, or length of the bit, one can see a myriad of differing possibilities, each readily identifiable as a "rhodesian", and yet each displaying markedly different character than the English shape of old. In 1981, Guidi was ready for a new pipe venture and, along with master carver Bruto Sordini, broke from Mastro de Paja and founded his own pipe company in the very workshop where Mastro de Paja had stood: Ser Jacopo.

The new company was named after a Renaissance nobleman and, while maintaining a shaping that was solidly grounded within the now established Pesaro aesthetic, a new emphasis was placed on the pairing of briar with a dizzying array of stylized mounts. At the time of this writing, no less than fourteen different mounts and bands are available to any given pipe, and the materials used can range from ox horn to amboyna burl, and that is confined to strictly the standard series. Ser Jacopo also further differentiated itself from its predecessor of "series" or "themed" pipes.

To digress a bit, the idea of doing a series of pipes, or pipes with a group theme was nothing new. Indeed, companies such as Dunhill and Peterson, have created, and continue to create, many a successful series. Often, these pipes would center on an event, a rare material or an historical figure. Perplexing to many, these series seemed to assign shapes in random, arbitrary manners. Why is the Lestrade that shape? Did Shackleton smoke a quarter bent billiard, with a compositionally dominating bowl? If not, why was that pipe assigned to the man? The brilliance of Giancarlo's idea lay within the fact that he would not base a series on say, "Heroes of the Ukrainian Famine". No, his editions would be formed upon the actual pipes that he could see in the hands of men, or depictions that could be clearly associated with an individual. They would be homage to the very briars that he saw smoked by the mariners and fisherman that he met on the docks of Pesaro. They would be based on pipes that appeared in the paintings of artists such as Van Gough, Magritte and Picasso. Some of his pipes would be even be inspired by the smoking instruments of Native Americans. These ground breaking departure were as appealing as they were radical, and the La Pipaccia, Picta, and Calumet series, respectively, met with great success. Indeed The Picta collections are held in universal acclaim.

Today, Ser Jacopo is a thriving company that employs five full time carvers, and produces roughly 6,000 pipes a year, These pipes range from the Geppetto (and sold under that brand name) to the Ser Jacopo "Gem" series, ultra rare high grades that have fetched up to $12,000. The pipe world owes a debt of gratitude, both to the 26 year old visionary with a revolutionary idea in 1971, and the 64 year old Giancarlo who continues his stewardship today. Thomas Jefferson once observed, in a letter to William Stephens Smith, that "A little revolution now and then is a good thing". I think Giancarlo Guidi might agree.