Md. Angga Rusticated Volcano w/ Bamboo Handmade Briar Pipe, New

Description

As with other forms of art and craft, pipe making has a curious tendency to “run in the family.” Denmark, of course, is famous for its pipe making dynasties, such as the successive generations of Ivarsson, Chonowitsch, and Balleby pipes. The same holds for the Morel family in France and the Blatter family in Canada. There are also instances where siblings make pipes together, such as in the cases of Blatter Bros and Vollmer & Nilsson. And there are also examples where two or more siblings from the same family will make pipes individually, as Sven Knudsen and Teddy Knudsen did before and after their brief Dantonian partnership.

This latter example is most apt to describe two brothers from Indonesia with seemingly genetic talents for pipe making: Wandi Riyadi and Md. Angga. While Angga has learned plenty from his brother Riyadi over the years, he’s also managed to step out of his brother’s increasingly large shadow and to carve his own path.

When this pipe arrived from Md. Angga, I was surprised by how it managed to remind of two very specific styles in artisan pipe making, while also being quite different. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is the pipe’s resemblance to those of Roman Kovalev of Doctor’s Pipes, in terms of its proportions and use of bamboo. But its wide, squat, volcano bowl also leans into the Ukulele and Eskimo designs of figures such as Sixten Ivarsson, Ed Burak, and Tom Eltang. Angga’s use of rustication, however, is what makes the pipe most interesting (as is often the case with his work), utilizing deep, concentric furrows around the bowl which transition at its base into a single point. Paired with the pipe’s burgundy hues, it has the bowl looking less than a Doctor’s-style tomato, or indeed a Ukulele or Eskimo, and much more like a dried stone fruit.

 

Details:

Length: 5.5″ / 139.7mm

Bowl Width: 0.74 / 18.79mm

Bowl Depth: 1.31″ / 33.27mm

Weight: 2.1oz / 60g