Pellegrini

Ron Pellegrini, from an article appearing in the The STATEN ISLANDER Shopping Guide, courtesy Guido Morvillo

Ron Pellegrini made pipes for his own pipe shop, The Sovereign Pipe Shop in Staten Island, New York, which were stamped as Sovereign pipes. Mr. Pellegrini's store closed in the mid-1980s, and he no longer makes pipes.

The following two articles on the The Sovereign Pipe Shop, and Ron are available in PDF, courtesy Guido Morvillo, a friend and customer of Ron's: Meet Your Merchant, The Sovereign Pipe Shop

From one of the articles in the The STATEN ISLANDER Shopping Guide:

Sovereign Pipe Shop
"If someone were to have come up to Ron Pellegrini 1 1/2 years ago and told him that the business he was planning to open was a pipe dream, Ron couldn't really have given that person an argument. Ron is the proprietor of the Sovereign Pipe Shop at 54 New Dorp Plaza. "This is not a commercial type shop." he explains; most of the pipes which he sells are made by his own hand out of natural briar. The shop also offers Ron's own special blends of tobacco - tobacco which is not prepackaged, and which contains no additives or preservatives. In addition, Ron does pipe repairs right on the premises, and he sells accessories like humidors, pipe holders, ash trays and tobacco pouches."

While Pellegrini did produce machined standards, he made them from briar blocks himself. They sold for $10 each in the early 1980s (Staten Island customers did not want to spend over $15 for standard shape pipes). Ron also made Freehand pipes. His pipes were only available for sale in his store.

• Examples and details of Standard Sovereign pipes, courtesy of Guido Morvillo. These 'Standards' are an exception in that they were custom made for Guido.
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