Martin Romijn Smooth “Dubliner Blowfish” w/ Zebrawood Handmade Briar Pipe, New

Description

Within the modern artisan community, there are many pipe makers with backgrounds in other forms of art, manufacture, and handicraft, and who apply skills learned in their previous vocations to the creation of their pipes. Some artisans are former machinists; others were carpenters; some were even painters in their past lives. Martin Romijn, on the other hand, belongs to a small minority of pipe makers whose previous career was in stonemasonry. Like Germany’s Frank Axmacher, Romijn spent much of his adult life cutting and sculpting stone, doing so across a broad range of practical and ornamental applications. While those days are now behind him, Romijn still carries with him much of what he learned from working with granite, quartz, and marble. The skills and philosophy he cultivated as a stonemason continue to inform his pipe making endeavors, just as they did when he set his sights on briar nearly a decade ago. And, when asked about his technique regarding the latter, he cracks a wry smile, stating simply that “pipe is already inside the piece of briar, I only have to reveal it by taking away everything that doesn’t look like a pipe!”

To call Martin Romijn’s pipes distinctive would be an understatement. Looking at his portfolio from over the years, it is clear that there is a “Romijn style” of pipe making. After having the pleasure of meeting him at the Chicago Pipe Show this year, it was a pleasure to bring back some of this style’s strongest exemplars for the Romijn Pipes MBSD debut. There is certainly something sculptural about Romiijn’s work; not just in the sense that, with their broad, assertive bowls, they give the impression of a figure perched atop a pedestal, but also in the sense that they possess a sturdiness meant to endure the test of time. In other words, they are both artistic and practical objects, intended to be held as much as they are to be beheld.
This one, dubbed the “Dubliner blowfish” by Romijn, similarly manages to integrate its quite disparate, constitutive parts—a paneled bowl, a rounded, conical shank, and a flared ebonite stem—into a design that is complex, yet cohesive. Even the pipe’s unconventional color palette, mixing planes of reddish-brown, bird’s-eyed briar, black and gold zebrawood, and woodland ebonite, appears as natural as any other, including the far more reserved compositions of 20th century staples.

 

Details:

Length: 5.4″ / 137.1mm

Bowl Width: 0.75 / 19.05mm

Bowl Depth: 1.46″ / 37.08mm

Weight: 2.6oz / 74g