Herriot Pipes Smooth Billiard w/ Boxwood 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.

When someone is starting out as a pipe maker and looking to improve their skills, one of the most common—and most decisive—pieces of advice they receive from other pipe makers is to “make a billiard.” There’s a few reasons for this. One is that making a billiard is, compared to other shapes, quite easy; the other is that making a good billiard is very difficult. Similarly, one reason is that there are millions of examples of billiard renditions to guide someone looking to make a billiard of their own; but this abundance also means that making a billiard that stands out is supremely challenging. So, the proportions, angles, grain, and so on, have to be just right, but at the same time these aspects need to all come together in a cohesive design that is interesting. Chris Herriot’s been making billiards since the very beginnings of Herriot Pipes, and returns to them frequently in his own work and in his work under Bruno Nuttens. It’s a shape he’s spent a lot of time with, which is plainly evident once you get your hands on one. All of this leads me to this latest Herriot billiard, which is a beautiful piece. As Herriot’s traditional pipes often do, it leans toward the early Anglo-French renditions, being shorter in stature, light in weight, and dressed in a natural finish. It does stray a little into the contemporary, but in a modest fashion, with a golden boxwood inlay turned into its honey-hued ebonite stem.

Details:

Length: 5.2″ / 132.0mm

Bowl Width: 0.71 / 18.03mm

Bowl Depth: 1.62″ / 41.14mm

Weight: 1.1oz / 32g