American Smoking Pipe Company Christmas 1989 Smooth Dublin Sitter (Unsmoked Estate)

The American Smoking Pipe Company was founded in 1978 by artisans Mark Tinsky and Curt Rollar. Tinsky and Rollar’s venture was part of a new wave of North American hand made pipe making that emerged in the 1970s and ’80s, including artisan carvers such as Mike Butera, Tim West, Elliot Nachtwalter and Jorg Jemelka. Despite the name, American Smoking Pipe Co. was not a factory or large scale operation, but a simple pipe workshop and name shared between friends. Rollar departed the company in 1990, after which Tinsky remained at the reins into the 2000s, before selling his pipes under his own name.

Upon the suggestion of John B. Hayes, a close friend and retailer of the American Smoking Pipe Company, Mark Tinsky and Curtis Rollar began making an annual, limited edition “Christma”s pipe in 1983. These pipes were unique designs (though a couple would later be reissued as catalog shapes), with a new one being released each year right up until the present—as Tinsky has continued this tradition even after going solo. As the number of Christmas pipes made was subject to fluctuations in demand and the communications constraints of a pre-Internet era, it’s now quite difficult to get one’s hands on earlier editions, especially those of the 1980s and 1990s, though as it happens we’ve had a handful of them come in just recently.

By Tinsky’s account, the 1989 edition of his and Rollar’s Christmas pipe was one of the most successful the two made together. Inspired by the Danish pipe making giants of the time, the design was a tall, yet strikingly graceful, Dublin sitter, with a slightly pinched stem cut that further evoked its Scandinavian influences. Unlike many of the pipes Tinsky and Rollar made at the American Smoking Pipe Company, the 1989 Christmas pipe was a thoroughly collaborative creation, with each having been roughed out and drilled by Tinsky and shaped and finished by Rollar.

This pipe is completely unsmoked, with an original bowl coating.

Details:

Length: 5.8″ / 147.3mm

Bowl Width: 0.88 / 22.35mm

Bowl Depth: 1.84″ / 46.73mm

Weight: 1.6oz / 48g