SU Pipes Golden Sandblasted Freehand Handmade Sandblasted Briar Pipe, New

Description

You may have wondered, as I often do, what would happen if professional meerschaum carver was to turn their attention to briar wood, and to make pipes out of that instead. While many early briar pipe manufacturers, such as Frederick Charatan, made just such a transition back in the late 19th century, both briar and meerschaum pipe manufacture have changed significantly in the century since, making for an interesting opportunity. Enter Sebahattin Urgan of SU Pipes, former apprentice to Eskişehir’s master of meerschaum Emre Bay and now an expert carver in his own right. Urgan’s talents have in recent years extended to handcrafting briar pipes, having been greatly inspired by the legends of Scandinavian and post-Scandinavian design.

For this pipe, Urgan channeled his inner Preben Holm, giving a striking answer to a question I’ve always wondered about: what would happen if a Turkish meerschaum carver, whose work is almost exclusively “freehand,” were to carve the kind of “freehand” pipe that we usually associate with that name? As it turns out, the result is a lovely, tall, freeform sitter, dressed in a ring grain sandblast finish very much reminiscent of the Ben Wade Golden Tan line (made by Holm). Urgan has paired his stummel in this instance with a matching tan stem, hand-cut from German ebonite.

As this is one of Urgan’s personal favorite pieces, it comes with a custom-fitted clam-shell case.

 

Details:

Length: 5″ / 127.0mm

Bowl Width: 0.82 / 20.82mm

Bowl Depth: 1.94″ / 49.27mm

Weight: 1.7oz / 50g