My career has always been in insurance, working since the early 1960’s for insurance companies and brokers known and respected around the world.

Over the past 25  years I have had an unfailing interest in collecting pipes and other smoking paraphernalia produced by Alfred Dunhill.

I have also devoted myself, with undying passion and the support of old catalogues, books and publicity material, to historical research in to this great name, mainly insofar as concerns the Company’s production in the years between 1950 and 1980.

If you have any query regarding the pipes produced by Alfred Dunhill in that period, please send me an e-mail with your question: I will be only too happy to answer putting at your disposal my knowledge as an enthusiast and my experience as a collector in this specific field.

Now, on the threshold of my “first” 60 years and mainly for reasons of space, I have decided to reorganise my collection and give up those shapes of which I have a number of examples. For this reason I decided to make use of the great possibilities offered by the web and allow my pipes to be known and appreciated by other collectors in other parts of the world, who may eventually add them to their own collections.

I have always loved my pipes very much and reserved for them special and very careful attention, care and respect. This allowed me to achieve the goal of owning pipes that, even though most of them have been smoked, and for many years too, show they have been well looked after and look even better than when they were new.

My personal view is that a pipe is only a more of less pleasing inanimate piece of wood until it has taken on that warm colour that comes from being well smoked: only at that point, when its character and reactions to tobacco combustion in its bowl have been revealed, does it become a real pipe; only then can the secrets of its briar be known: its taste, flavour, aroma and sweetness.

In recent years I have extended my interest to Castello pipes, which I find both beautiful and of an extraordinary softness and, consequently, well suited to reducing the strength of the British mixtures that I usually smoke. The Castello factory is in Cantù, a few kilometres from Milan, and it was there that I had the great privilege and pleasure of being introduced to the late lamented Cav. Carlo Scotti, founder of this mythical brand name, and to his son-in-law and brilliant successor, Franco “Kino” Coppo, who honours me with a relationship of friendly cordiality.

Unfortunately I am not competent to hold forth on what Castello have produced: what I can state, however, without fear of contradiction is that these pipes are of a very high quality and equal to that of Dunhill. Whenever I select one to smoke, my choice falls indifferently on one or the other brand, without any specific preference, choosing it only on the basis of its suitability in terms of form and weight to whatever activity may await me during the time I smoke it.

I hope I have succeeded in giving an idea of my years as a collector and invite all those interested to contact me to have information about my collection.

Before closing, I would like to express particular thanks to my dear friend Hugh Page Taylor in far-off Melbourne in Australia. Hugh and I have both devoted our entire working lives to insurance, working together since the early 1960’s; he helped me as no-one else could to express my thoughts in his native English, and I do not hide the fact that I hope he will one day return to Italy.

Hugh will very likely soon be launching his own web site, devoted to a subject he has been working on without respite for some 40 years: the political, military and paramilitary history of Italy, Germany and their allies in World War II. A number of his works have been published, in London and the US, and are well known to those who share his interest. It is thus with great pleasure that I invite anyone sharing his interest in the subject to contact me to learn more and to have Hugh's email address.

Visitors to this site will certainly not fail to notice that this is my first venture onto the Web. I therefore ask for their forbearance and assure them that I will be working to the best of my ability to improve the site to give maximum satisfaction. My task will be made easier if you let me know (francobol@tin.it) of anything you would like to see changed or added to the site that would improve its performance. I will gratefully pay careful attention to all such suggestions in the frequent and ongoing up-dating of the site.

Milan, September 14, 2000.