Herriot Pipes Partially Sandblasted Bulldog Handmade Briar Pipe, New

Description

In 2003, one of France’s preeminent pipe luminaries, Erwin Van Hove, jubilantly proclaimed, “Hallelujah! One of the very best American artisans has recently settled on French soil.” Two decades later, Antoine Grenard, director of Chapuis-Comoy and president of the Confrérie des Maîtres-Pipiers de Saint-Claude, oversaw the induction of another artisan originally from the Anglophone world into its hallowed brotherhood. Van Hove was, of course, welcoming Trever Talbert. The Confrérie, on the other hand, was welcoming Chris Herriot. Parallels between the two are difficult to ignore; both were outsiders who laid down roots in France and, crucially, thrived by it. Both forged connections with the Francophone pipe community, developing friendships and associations that would help them lay the foundations of their respective brands. And both would build something on these foundations that garnered them significant national and international acclaim. In Herriot’s case, this meant apprenticing under Bruno Nuttens (himself a former student of Pierre Morel and Tom Eltang), spending several days each week laboring in Nuttens’ Charpey workshop, and the rest of his time in his own.

While Chris Herriot has been spending a good amount of time with Tom Eltang at the latter’s Copenhagen workshop, fans of Herriot’s more traditional designs will be pleased to know that he has certainly not forgotten his roots. The Charpey carver began his career making excellent, hand-turned renditions of Anglo-French classics, and he continues to do so, with the only arguable difference is that each is even better than the last.

This particular pipe is a beautiful, slightly stout, bulldog, one that deftly plays with contrasts in both texture and hue. Dressed in a partial, ring grain sandblast that ends just as the bowl’s bead-lines begin, both the smooth and blasted sections of the pipe wear a two-tone top-coat that matches perfectly with the pipe’s similarly brindled, hand-cut cumberland stem.

Details:

Length: 5.8″ / 147.3mm

Bowl Width: 0.80 / 20.32mm

Bowl Depth: 1.68″ / 42.67mm

Weight: 1.9oz / 56g