Todd Brugman dd Grade Smooth Prince Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

Description

Todd Brugman is an American artisan and the in-house pipe maker for Boston’s L.J. Peretti tobacconist. While Brugman shapes all of his pipes by hand, an approach much in keeping with the Danish tradition of allowing the grain itself to suggest what style of pipe it should be, Brugman is also heavily influenced by the French-American industrial designer Raymond Loewy. While Loewy didn’t design pipes, his impact on industrial design, especially in America, cannot be overstated. Loewy lent designs to just about everyone one can think of, from Lucky Strike cartons to Coldspot refrigerators, Greyhound bus interiors, and Studebaker models.

Looking at this highly unique take on the traditional prince, for example, one can see Brugman has paid close attention to the briar, working with the ways in which its grain patterns have suggested certain lines and figures. But it’s also hard not to see Loewy’s vehicular creations in particular reflected in the final shape, which sits somewhere between a prince and a squat tomato. The ways in which the bowl is rounded out and its distinctive cant relative to the stem. Loewy’s art deco designs for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company are a good point of reference here. What’s impressive is how Brugman has pulled off this synthesis of influences in wildly different mediums, earning the pipe his highest grade, the “dd.”

This pipe is completely unsmoked, with an original bowl coating.

 

Details:

Length: 5.4″ / 137.1mm

Bowl Width: 0.93 / 23.62mm

Bowl Depth: 1.07″ / 27.17mm

Weight: 1.6oz / 46g