Jack Howell Rusticated Dublin Estate Briar Pipe

Description

Jack Howell is an American artisan pipe-maker based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Beginning his pipe-making profession in 1999, Howell balances making high-grade pipes with his other career as a musician in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. While the latter is Howell’s self-admitted primary vocation, Howell’s pipes are a cult favorite among pipe-smokers and are renowned for their artistic vision and technical skill. As such, Howell’s pipes can be particularly hard to come by, much to the chagrin of his many admirers.

This is a pipe from fairly early on in Jack Howell’s pipe-making career, but that’s not to its detriment. I see a lot of parallels with the work of someone like Randy Wiley in this one, for example in its painstaking hand-rustication, which gives the appearance of somewhere between tree bark and a light sandblast. There’s also its bare plateau rim and its amber-toned acrylic stem, which similarly recall the great American freehand carvers and the directions they took their Danish inspiration in. It’s a large, tactile pipe, one that already shows Howell’s famed aesthetic and technical capabilities. Get it while you can – these pipes don’t hang around for long.

The condition is very good. There’s a little bit of darkening on the inner lip of the rim, and some very minor handling marks on the bowl finish, but these are superficial imperfections.

 

Details:

Length: 6.5″ / 165.1mm

Bowl Width: 0.81 / 20.57mm

Bowl Depth: 1.75″ / 44.45mm

Weight: 2.1oz / 62g