When I was seventeen years old, after three years shut in a college, the first pipe appears to me in a morning, during my usual visit to my tobacconist: it was like a flash! She had just received some packages with a pipe, pipecleaners, tamper insied, some beginner packs. I bought it together with a tobacco tin (Clan) and I happly get out the store smoking my pipe.
At that time everybody were used to smoke, teatchers, students and sometimes even the custodians. I liked the idea of smoking a pipe instead of cigarettes; but my mates and teatchers did not agree with my point of vision and I had to start some fights! In the beginning my palate was terribly delicate and I suffered tongue bite, but my `war` started...
After one month I because a real pipe smoker and I was allowed to go out from my classroom whenever I desired light my pipe: it was a big particle of freedom, in a period where obedience was the fundament.
The first smoke in a pipes that I realized myself was when I was 23. I was helped by an man who lived near Cagli. Our frienship and partnership continued untill he passed away. I was very tired about all the pipes that I was able to find on the market: I desired a different pipe, but it was only in my mind. It tooks two years before I was able to keep my dream in my hand, but right after I realized it, a Tobacconist in Urbino saw it and he ordered me ten pieces. It was 31 years ago (1977) and that tobacconist is sill through the stores who sell my pipes.
I spent two more years attending workshops in the Pesaro area, when I decided to create a brand, together with a partner: I established Ser Jacopo dalla Gemma.
But the three has been very short. I have not been able to suffer to be the `second` or maybe `the last one` in my own workshop.
After 5 years, in 1987 I left Ser Jacopo and I begun a two years long `pilgrimage` attending others pipe workshops in Pesaro; my desire was to enlarge my knoledge with different techniques. I found my fortune when I arrived at `Il Ceppo` workshop, where I met the most ingenious of all Pesareses pipemakers. When I entered his workshop, it was like attending university: each day I learned something new, working 12 hours a day, never feeling tired. Mr. Imperatori helped me to build up my workshop and he followed me like a father for several years, helping me to fix all technical problems: I have a very big debt with him.
I selected Don Carlos name... almost casually: It was a Verdi`s Opera, an italian production very well known all around the world. I did not know Verdi very well and I did no appreciate the very little of his music that I was used to listen but absent mindedly: I did not have any kind decency in using it.
If I could turn back time, this would be the only thing I would change in my life as pipemaker. Now that I begin to know Giuseppe Verdi better and I appreciate his music, I simply think that I confused the real art with my mud... I can only go ahead!
My relationship with Italian dealers has never been very joyful: I had `artistic bad experience` during my first try to sell to a store (I`ve not been in contact with the co-protagonist of this story, but beside that I am still emotionally connected with him. When my first Italian distributor literally massacred me, I decided, together with my wife Rosaria, to stop selling in Italy. A very big company from United States of America believed in my potentiality and in a very short time they committed me a lot of work: I suddenly found myself, in my workshop with four assistants and a terrible quantity of work! Six years ago (October 19th, 2008) I had a terrible motorcycle incident: this fact really marked my turn. I took 54 days to get back in a vertical position and one year and half through surgeries and therapies to have my left hand back to work like in good time. In this while, my assistants obviously found a new job and the American Company...
disappeared! I was slowly back to work in a new and different dimension, in the loneliness of my big workshop, flooded by music!
Now I really feel better and in peace. I have a very small production, I barely make 400 pipes in one year. If I fail one day from my workshop, I immediately fell that something is missing: this is my little kingdom, where a good idea takes a very short time to became reality.
