Bruno Nuttens Heritage H3 Smooth Dublin Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

Description

Starting out as a pipe restorer, Belgian artisan Bruno Nuttens moved onto producing his own pipes under the careful guidance of France’s most esteemed master pipe makers, Pierre Morel Jr. Nuttens’ first pipes creating relatively traditional pipes—often using carefully selected, decades-seasoned stummels from France’s historic Saint-Claude factories—but he would soon begin developing entirely handmade pipes in styles that seamlessly blended the old with the new. In the case of the latter, Nuttens was no doubt aided by time spent in the workshop of Danish legend Tom Eltang, where he further developed the skills and techniques behind his craft. Nuttens made such an impact in Denmark, in fact, that he’s been commissioned three times to develop the Stokkebye Pipe of the Year, a number rivaled only by Eltang himself. Today, Nuttens continues to craft high-grade pipes in a variety of styles, including his signature “Bing” and “Twiggy” shapes.

Briar is by no means inexpensive, and even briar sourced from the finest cutters in the world may well end up with sandpits and fissures that render it completely unusable as far as pipe making goes. Not unlike Trever Talbert before him (and many others after, including us at MBSD Pipes) Bruno Nuttens’s Heritage series takes pre-turned stummels from the historic warehouses of Saint-Claude and finishes them himself, adding hand cut mouthpieces in the process. You could think of these pipes as something of a collaboration across time. The stummels were once turned in the pipe making powerhouses of 19th and 20th century France, before the companies responsible for them shuttered, or were absorbed into other companies. Now, in the 21st century, Nuttens uses his contacts in Saint-Claude to acquire the best of these preserved, well-seasoned stummels, turning them into the pipes they were always meant to be—or, indeed, something even better. This one is a classic, featherweight Dublin, whose bird’s-eye briar has earned it the second-highest grade for a Nuttens Heritage pipe, the H3.

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

 

Details:

Length: 5.3″ / 134.6mm

Bowl Width: 0.70 / 17.78mm

Bowl Depth: 1.60″ / 40.64mm

Weight: 0.9oz / 28g