HS Studio Sandblasted Asymmetric Dublin w/ Reverse Calabash Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

Description

If you’ve been keeping up with the world of Chinese pipe making, their artisan scene has been really taking off over the last decade. Like the great Danish institutions of old, many of these pipes are produced in artisan workshops such as Zhiputang, Qi Studio, and GH Zhang. Hong Kong’s HS Studio follows a similar model, with a team of expert in-house carvers crafting high-quality briars in a variety of styles.

I could sit here and talk about form, curvature, asymmetry, teardrop shanks, influences from artisans in Denmark, the United States, and Japan, reverse calabash systems, and so on, but I’m fairly sure that most will look at this pipe and see one thing: the finish. The sandblasting on this very modern Dublin rendition from HS Studio is almost unbelievable, with ring grain so crisp that one might first think it was rusticated, like Sasieni used to do, or Andrea Gigliuicci does now (both of which are excellent, I should add). But no, it’s just an incredibly well executed blast on what will have been an incredibly fortuitous block of briar. Even with the bowl’s obsidian top coat it leaps out, as if uncontainable by any force of man.

This pipe is completely unsmoked, with an original (slightly flaked) bowl coating.

 

Details:

Length: 6.4″ / 162.5mm

Bowl Width: 0.84 / 21.33mm

Bowl Depth: 1.65″ / 41.91mm

Weight: 2.7oz / 78g