SU Pipes Tokutomi Tribute Smooth Whale w/ Mammoth 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.

At the beginning of 2025, the world bade farewell to one of the giants of post-Scandinavian artisan pipe making, Hiroyuki Tokutomi. Tokutomi was one of those individuals whose work often went far beyond the standard designs of his forebears and his contemporaries, instead creating wholly new shapes and styles that warranted a new lexicon to even speak of them. Needless to say, his passing was a major event in the world of pipes, with many artisans setting themselves the challenge of crafting tributes to someone who had been a significant influence on their own pipes. This included Sebahattin Urgan of SU Pipes, who produced a small number of renditions of iconic Tokutomi designs, with a few extra touches of his own. This pipe is one of those renditions, based on the late Japanese master’s “whale” shapes. Like its namesake, the form is one evocative of a marine mammal breaching the surface of the waves, with this interpretation including a base fittingly foaming with plateaux burl and an accent of fossilized bone collaring its stem.

This being one of Urgan’s favorite pipes, it comes with a custom-fitted clam-shell case—which may well be the first of its kind for any Tokutomi rendition.

Details:

Length: 6″ / 152.4mm

Bowl Width: 0.80 / 20.32mm

Bowl Depth: 1.33″ / 33.78mm

Weight: 4.0oz / 116g