Rainer Barbi 2005 AB Grade Smooth Brandy Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

Description

Alongside near-contemporaries such as Otto Pollner and Karlheinz Joura, Rainer Barbi was one of the “grand old men” of German artisan pipe making. Beginning his career in the 1970s, Barbi was largely self-taught, but nevertheless managed to establish a reputation as one of the most talented freehand pipe carvers in the world. In his later years, Barbi would partner with companies such as Hilson, Brebbia, and [posthumously] Dan Pipe in order to offer series-produced pipes based on his own designs. Barbi passed away in 2011. 

An old friend remarked to me once that, after Rainer Barbi’s passing, the quality of pipes generally speaking got worse. By his reckoning, this was not simply because, with Barbi gone, there were fewer high-grade pipes being made, but boiled down to an all the more bold claim: that Barbi, both directly and indirectly, enforced strict standards as to what a high-grade should be, whether this was in terms of shaping, engineering, finishing, and—of course—good grain. It’s a provocative thesis but, when you handle Barbi’s pipes, they really are something else, and their relative absence from the contemporary market could indeed make for compelling arguments in that vein. Whether or not pipe quality has declined since 2011 is not something I feel entirely equipped to weigh in on, even now, so I will limit myself to merely commenting on this one, which is indeed excellent.

As an “AB” grade, it’s just about in the middle of Barbi’s grading scheme. Given that it is superbly grained, with tight, “angel hair” straight grain lining its squat, brandy-ish bowl, that should tell you something about Barbi’s aforementioned standards. The design itself is quite typical of Barbi, and somewhat common to the German pipe makers of his generation, with one foot in either of the traditional and the modern, “Danish, styles, and a distinctive use of flattened planes—especially at the base—on top of that scaffold.

This pipe is completely unsmoked, with an original bowl coating.

Details:

Length: 5.4″ / 137.1mm

Bowl Width: 0.83 / 21.08mm

Bowl Depth: 1.27″ / 32.25mm

Weight: 1.6oz / 46g