Joura Grade A Smooth Apple Estate Briar Pipe, German Estates

Description

Karlheinz Joura is a fascinating German pipe-maker, based in the town of Bremen. Along with being a pipe-maker of the same stature as Italy’s Baldo Baldi, or Denmark’s Per Hansen and Ulf Noltensmeier of S. Bang, Joura is a former world-class diver. He’s also perhaps the only master pipe-maker to have successfully crossed the Berlin wall, having defected from Communist East Germany in the 1960s, narrowly escaping its secret police in the process.

Joura pipe grades and nomenclature are a little odd, so allow me to explain this one. It’s a grade A, which, counter-intuitively, isn’t the first or last rank. Instead, Joura pipes start at ungraded, sandblasted pipes; then come smooth pipes graded 7, 8, 9, A; and then come the ‘Infinity’ series. So, this is a higher-grade Joura – so high, in fact, that the retail price for a grade A Joura pipe in 2003 was $880 US dollars. Adjusted for inflation, that means this pipe retailed for the equivalent of $1500 US dollars today. The other stamps on this pipe indicate that it was shaped freehand (‘Freihand’ is German for ‘freehand’), that it was made from southern French briar (here designated by a leaf), and that it was made for import to the United States by CAO (hence the diamond CAO company logo).

The condition is excellent, but we must mention one thing: this Joura came to us with a stem that had been overbuffed, causing it not to fit flush with the shank. So, we had this stem replaced – but not just by anyone. Instead, the new, cumberland stem was hand cut by the contemporary American master artisan Sean Reum, who has spent a great deal of time studying Joura stems in order to replicate the original as closely as possible.

Details:

Length: 5.5″ / 139.7mm

Bowl Width: 0.78 / 19.81mm

Bowl Depth: 1.32″ / 33.52mm

Weight: 1.6oz / 46g