Herriot Pipes Partially Sandblasted Egg 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.

As mentioned when Herriot Pipes last graced our shop, Chris Herriot has been recently been spending time not only with one of his mentors, Bruno Nuttens, but with one of his mentors’ mentors, Tom Eltang. Herriot’s pilgrimages to Copenhagen to study under Eltang have borne fruit in a number of ways, from refining the technical aspects of his craft to taking the plunge into more freeform designs.

This pipe is somewhere between Herriot’s earlier style and his more recent, Scandinavian excursions. Herriot has, after all, crafted a few egg shapes before, though this one is much more plump and “Danish” than the last one we had in. There’s a stronger organic impulse to its form, especially when factoring in the pipe’s slightly asymmetric, concave rim. Rather than Eltang, one might say there’s a touch of Former to it, or indeed the earlier pipes of Anne Julie, though with the addition of a more reserved, bird’s-eye sandblast and a signature “Herriot” dash of color, this time by way of a blue cumberland stem.

Details:

Length: 5.5″ / 139.7mm

Bowl Width: 0.81 / 20.57mm

Bowl Depth: 1.80″ / 45.72mm

Weight: 1.5oz / 44g