Sebastian Heck Smooth Volcano Sitter Handmade Briar Pipe, New

Description

Sebastian Heck is part of younger generation of highly skilled artisans to have emerged from Germany in recent years. Based in Heidelberg, Heck took up pipe smoking—and, ultimately, pipe-making—as part of a conscious effort toward slowing down in an otherwise constantly accelerating modern world. Like many pipe makers, Heck took his first steps into the craft as a restorer of estate and heirloom pieces, which in time brought with it an expansion of his workshop and the tools housed within it. With this as a base, creating new pipes of his own was a natural progression. Heck’s development has been greatly influenced by the Danish and German schools of pipe design, and has included time spent learning directly from fellow German artisans, such as Dirk Heinemann.

The volcano is one of many traditional shapes radically transformed with the advent of post-war artisan pipe making, with one figure in particular having a profound influence on how it is approached: Jorn Micke. Micke’s volcanoes were much truer to their namesake than earlier renditions, resulting in broad and softly contoured “peaks” that emerged from the base of one’s mouthpiece. Micke was particularly well received in Japan, with masters such as the late Smio Satou continuing this distinct development in the volcano form. The “Mickean” volcano crossed continents once again at the turn of this century, with a number of artisans from the world influenced by Scandi-Japanese pipe design. This finely grained piece from Germany’s Sebastian Heck finds itself within that evolutionary lineage. Distinctly squat and wide, this sitter’s incline from base to rim is suitably steep, though not without the signature, naturalistic incline of the modern, Mickean volcano.

Details:

Length: 5.5″ / 139.7mm

Bowl Width: 0.90 / 22.86mm

Bowl Depth: 1.25″ / 31.75mm

Weight: 1.9oz / 54g