Johs Smooth XXL Cherrywood Sitter Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

Description

Denmark’s Mogens “Johs” Johansen made his first pipe in 1983, beginning as a self-taught artisan while receiving guidance from his friend, the late Peter Hedegaard. Johs established his own workshop in the mid-1980s, with his pipes quickly garnering significant acclaim. In fact, Joh’s became such a sensation in the Danish pipe smoking community that, at one point, he had to close his doors to the wider public as he was getting so many visitors that it was interrupting his work. Among the growing number of admirers of Johs’s work was none other than the legendary Bjarne Nielsen, who snapped up the former to make Bjarne pipes in 1992. Alongside Tonni Nielsen, Ph. Vigen, and Ole Bandholm, Johs ultimately became one of the main craftsmen behind the Bjarne brand. After Nielsen’s sudden passing in 2008, Johs returned his focus to making pipes under his own name, while also running the Gaden Pibemagerie pipe shop with his wife, Doris. As is common in the Danish artisan community, Johs has since paid forward the debt owed to his debt to Hedegaard by helping to cultivate newer generations of pipe makers, mentoring artisans such as Knud Bech, Johannes Hoffman, Dieter Gottschling.

The Danes do love their cherrywood shapes, whether in the functionalist vein of Tom Eltang, or in the more balletic, “Danish style” of figures such as Peter Heeschen. Johs too has a certain proclivity for the form, and it’s one he honed his skills at carving all the way back when he was working for Bjarne Nielsen. This is an impressively large, near-magnum rendition from his solo venture, with a nice, warm brown finish and a sturdily sitting figure.

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

Details:

Length: 6.9″ / 175.2mm

Bowl Width: 1.02 / 25.90mm

Bowl Depth: 2.11″ / 53.59mm

Weight: 3.2oz / 92g