La Biota Rusticated Morta Handmade Pipe, New

Description

A graduate of Italy’s prestigious Academia della Pipa, Michele Sottocasa has been making pipes for over a decade under the la Biota name. Prior to becoming a pipe-maker, Sottocasa trained and worked as a designer and art director, and la Biota pipes continue this drive towards a distinct aesthetic vision. The name, ‘la Biota,’ originally derives from ecology, and symbolizes the deep connection between humans and nature – a connection well represented by the hand-made tobacco pipe.

Bog oak, or morta, is an incredibly hard material, being the product of oak trees fossilized over thousands of years. I imagine it was a painstaking labor for Michele to carefully hand rusticate this one, but at least it paid off. The millennia-old wood composing the bowl of this pipe has a wonderfully tactile quality to it, but the pipe is also exceedingly lightweight, at just 32 grams, meaning that it will also clench like a dream. Completing the design is a shank ring of Thuja wood and a hand cut ebonite stem.

All la Biota pipes are made by hand by Michele Sottocasa in his workshop in the mountainous Northern region of Italy. Sottocasa prefers the wood lathe over the metal lathe traditionally used by pipe-makers, which he uses to painstakingly hand-shape each la Biota bowl, and hand-cut each la Biota stem. As Sottocasa strives to make each la Biota pipe unique and does not like to repeat shapes and design choices he has made in the past, every la Biota pipe is one of a kind – once it is gone, it is gone forever.

Details:

Length: 4.5″ / 114.3mm

Bowl Width: 0.70 / 17.7mm

Bowl Depth: 1.74″ / 44.1mm

Weight: 1.1oz / 32g