HS Studio Sandblasted Reverse Calabash Nosewarmer 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.

We’ve listed a number of HS Studio pipes from a new old stock (NOS) lot in recent months, and I’ve been pretty impressed with the sheer variety of shapes and styles the workshop puts out. This might well be the most distinctive pipe of theirs I’ve yet encountered, though. While I have a slight hunch that it might be partly inspired by someone like Jorn Micke, or at least his admirers in the Japanese scene, I struggle to definitively compare it to any firm precedent. With its plump, slightly scooping, apple bowl, stubby proportions and offset-flared stem, it seems to me to be genuinely unique, and very fun at that. It’s also simply very well made, with deep, ring grain sandblasting surrounding its compact bowl.

This pipe is completely unsmoked, with an original bowl coating.

 

Details:

Length: 4.4″ / 111.7mm

Bowl Width: 0.76 / 19.30mm

Bowl Depth: 1.12″ / 28.44mm

Weight: 1.7oz / 50g