American Smoking Pipe Company Christmas 1993 Smooth Billiard Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

Description

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 luckily we’ve had a handful of them come in just recently.

This one, from 1993, is far more interesting than one might initially presume. It is essentially the answer to an age-old question in pipe design: What is the perfect billiard? Some might say it’s the classic Dunhill LB; others might point to Giancarlo Guidi’s Divina Proportione renditions for Ser Jacopo, which were inspired by de Pacioli’s formulation of the golden ratio. The 1993 American Smoking Pipe Company Christmas Pipe was Mark Tinsky’s own answer. Taking a selection of his favorite billiard designs, including from the aforementioned Dunhill and Ser Jacopo, as well as from Barling’s Make, Tinsky synthesized what he considered to be the best elements of each, resulting in the design seen here (and in what looks to be Tinsky’s high-end Natural finish, no less). Is this, then, the most perfect billiard design ever created? Perhaps that’s too subjective for me to conclude one way or the other. Though I will say, I can’t fault it—it’s a genuinely great rendition.

This pipe is completely unsmoked. There are a couple of superficial scratches on the rim, though nothing major by any stretch.

Details:

Length: 6″ / 152.4mm

Bowl Width: 0.89 / 19.05mm

Bowl Depth: 1.80″ / 45.72mm

Weight: 1.6oz / 46g