Moonlight Pipes “Taproot” Lovat Handmade Briar Pipe, New

Description

While some pipe-makers take inspiration from the natural world, or from the technologies of present and past, few of them in the contemporary seek to represent these forms in their work. Czech artisan Ondrej Bárta of Moonlight pipes does just that, in a way that recalls the intricate, figural carvings of briar pipes from the turn of the 20th century. But Ondrej also departs from the figural approach of early briar pipes by combining it with high-grade materials and a careful attention to grain patterns that is far more modern.

There’s been a great mix of the organic and the artificial in Ondrej Bárta’s latest batch of Moonlight Pipes, as well as a good mix of classically inclined designs and more experimental ones. This one, dubbed “Taproot,” falls into the former categories of both of those. In essence, it is a kind of Lovat, or quarter-bent billiard perhaps, with a beautifully grained bowl that wouldn’t look out of place on something out of the old Anglo-French factories. As the bowl progresses down and transitions to the shank, things start to change, with Bárta’s figural predilections coming to the fore. The meaning of “Taproot” in this sense also starts to reveal itself. The majority of the shank is, after all, carved in the form of a twisting mass of roots, which culminate in the pipe’s hand-cut ebonite stem. The bowl, then, is like the plant or the flower that sits atop a subterranean mass of fibers. As with other Moonlight Pipes, there’s certainly parallels to be drawn with this one and the pipes of the great Paul Larrysson Hubbart, though—and again, as with Bárta’s portfolio in general—the strongest connection is to an ethos of pipe design that stretches much further back in time.

Details:

Length: 5.8″ / 147.3mm

Bowl Width: 0.81 / 20.57mm

Bowl Depth: 1.48″ / 37.59mm

Weight: 1.3oz / 38g