Rolando Negoita XL Smooth Ball w/ Silver Estate Briar Pipe, American Estates

Description

Born in Romania, Rolando Negoita studied at the National University of Arts in Bucharest before moving to the United States, where he was a professor at the Parsons School of Design in New York. Negoita’s first forays into pipe making began in what was then the Socialist Republic of Romania, due to impassible difficulties in acquiring them on the market. Negoita thus resolved to make his own. In America, Negoita continued to develop his pipe making skills, assisted by figures such as Tom Eltang and Trever Talbert along the way. Though he was not born there, Negoita ultimately became one of America’s most renowned artisan pipe-makers, which he remained until his passing in 2021.

Though by no means a prerequisite, a background in the arts bestows certain advantages when it comes to pipe design. Take Ed Burak, Todd Johnson, Bill Shalosky—all highly innovative pipe designers, all with a scholarly background in the arts, and that’s just in the United States. Perhaps the message to be learned from this is that, if you are in the process of considering or completing a college degree in that general area, your career options are going to be limited, but you might come away from it having the ability to think up some really novel and highly appreciated pipes (just don’t treat that as your primary back-up plan). Negoita’s pipes have been recognized for their distinctly artistic vision for a long time, with most appearing to either defy all existing categories of pipe shapes, or establish wholly new ones. They’re not pipe art, in the sense that all they’re good for is looking at, as they are expertly engineered and perform marvelously, but as this almost surrealist bent ball shows, they are very much the pipes of an artist.

The condition is great. Some minor handling marks. The pipe comes with its original leather sleeve.

 

Details:

Length: 6.5″ / 165.1mm

Bowl Width: 0.79 / 20.06mm

Bowl Depth: 1.54″ / 39.11mm

Weight: 2.6oz / 76g