SU Pipes Smooth Asymmetric Egg 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.

In the case of this pipe, Urgan has taken the subtle asymmetric approach to form found in post-Scandinavian design and applied it to a shape not typically associated with asymmetry: the egg. To accomplish this, Urgan has taken the familiar “teardrop” motif found in Scandinavian and post-Scandinavian pipes and made the highly novel decision to place it at the pipe’s rim, with its point tracing a line that follows down the entirety of the bowl, along the shank, and across the base of the stem, where it tapers off in a spiral figure. It’s an impressive piece of work, and, of course, a very beautiful one when combined with the bowl’s bird’s-eye and cross grain and the deep contrast finish that accentuates these patterns.

Note that as this is one of Urgan’s higher-end pipes it comes with a custom-fitted hard case.

Details:

Length: 5.5″ / 139.7mm

Bowl Width: 0.79 / 20.06mm

Bowl Depth: 1.79″ / 45.46mm

Weight: 1.9oz / 56g