Butz Choquin Maitre Pipier JR Partially Rusticated Calabash w/ Horn 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. The “JR,” or “Junior,” was a subseries of such pipes based exclusively around modernized re-interpretations of the traditional calabash. This one, for example, is a single-piece rendition with a partial rustication emulating the “caps” found on older gourd variants, with an added horn ferrule leading to its vulcanite mouthpiece.

The condition is very good. Some inner rim darkening.

Details:

Length: 6.1″ / 154.9mm

Bowl Width: 0.90 / 22.86mm

Bowl Depth: 1.88″ / 47.75mm

Weight: 1.5oz / 44g