SU Pipes Smooth Apple Handmade 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.

As is often the case between briar artisans, the master-apprentice relationships of meerschaum pipe carving often results in certain proclivities being “passed down,” with many an apprentice favoring the styles of their former masters. With Sebahattin Urgan, however, things are slightly more complex, as his is a lineage that includes both meerschaum carvers and briar artisans. Urgan studied under Emre Bay; Emre Bay studied under Fikri Baki; and Fikri Baki learned a thing or two from time spent with Rainer Barbi, even if Barbi wasn’t Baki’s “master” in the same sense. When this pipe from Urgan landed on my desk, I was quite sure that there must have been at least a little of an influence from the German legend, given its shaping. After learning that Urgan was involved in a small Barbi-related project a while back, along with Emre, it all clicked. It’s a nice pipe on its own merits, of course, though its bulbous, flame-grained, full bent form became all the more interesting knowing the relatively few degrees of separation between it and one of Barbi’s masterpieces.

As this is one of Urgan’s higher-end pieces, it comes with a custom-fitted hard case.

Details:

Length: 5.5″ / 139.7mm

Bowl Width: 0.73 / 18.54mm

Bowl Depth: 1.43″ / 36.32mm

Weight: 2.4oz / 70g