Butz Choquin Maitre Pipier Extra JR Smooth Calabash Estate Briar Pipe, French Estates

Description

With its origins in an 1858 collaboration between Jean-Baptiste Choquin and Gustave Butz, Butz-Choquin ultimately become one of the premier smoking pipe companies in 20th century France. The brand is known both for its stylish variations on traditional English-French shapes and for its exploration of atypical and elaborate finishes. The brand is also known for its collaborations with celebrated French pipe-makers, such as Paul Lanier and Alain Albuisson, who made some of Butz-Choquin’s highest-grade pipes for the company.  

Butz-Choquin made great, reliable factory briars in the grand old French tradition. But they also offered entirely handmade pieces, including the Maître-Pipier series. Maître-Pipier is French for “master pipe-maker,” and Butz-Choquin weren’t kidding with this designation, as these pipes were made by genuine masters—who were, of course, the aforementioned Lanier and Albuisson. This Butz-Choquin is a quite stuning, classically inclined calabash, with a long, horn ferrule mount. While its light, brown-orange hue evokes that of the traditional gourd calabashes, it has something that gourd, as a medium, does not: fields of dazzling bird’s-eye grain.

The condition is great. Some slight weathering of the horn mount, but nonetheless beautifully preserved, and deservedly so.

 

Details:

Length: 6″ / 152.4mm

Bowl Width: 0.96 / 24.38mm

Bowl Depth: 1.90″ / 48.26mm

Weight: 1.5oz / 44g