SU Pipes Smooth “Bo Nordh Bulldog” 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.

While artisan pipes are each a unique creation of a (typically) solitary individual in their workshop, and while artisans (again, typically) don’t work according to the mandates of specific, pre-established shape charts and catalogs, there are, nevertheless shapes that exert a certain influence on such pipe makers as a community. In other words, there are many shapes that many artisans have produced renditions of, despite not being asked to do so by, say, a factory manager. These include designs found in the catalogs of the old, Anglo-French factories (such as the billiard or the Canadian), as well as designs that were wholly conceived by another artisan (such as the Peewit or the blowfish), and which were so impressive that they spawned a whole genre of re-interpretations and homages. Still, new capital-“S” Shapes  don’t come around too often. Artisans are constantly coming up with novel designs for their pipes, but that in no way guarantees that those designs become Shapes shared by the community.

Where is this going? The late and legendary Swede Bo Nordh created a lot of Shapes that remain staples of artisan pipe makers, such as the Nautilus or the Ramses. But there were also plenty of Nordh designs that never took off. One of them was a unique Rhodesian rendition that Nordh simply couldn’t get right. It was only decades later, after Love Geiger and Sara Mossberg (of Geiger Pipes) tweaked the design that it finally took off and became one of the 21st century’s new Shapes—which Love and Sara called the “BoDog” (as in, Bo‘s bullDog). So, new Shapes may be rare, yet they do still happen. From Steve Norse, to Tristan Lefebvre, to Wandi Riyadi, one can now find BoDog re-interpretations across the global artisan community, including this one from Sebahattin Urgan of SU Pipes. Not only is it a beautiful little pipe, with plenty of flame grain and a dash of plateaux at its rim, it also comes with a custom fitted case, which Urgan provides for his most special pipes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a BoDog with one of those before.

 

Details:

Length: 5.4″ / 137.1mm

Bowl Width: 0.81 / 20.57mm

Bowl Depth: 1.33″ / 33.78mm

Weight: 1.6oz / 46g