Tsuge Tokyo 502 Sandblasted Dublin w/ Bamboo Estate Briar Pipe, Japanese Estates

Description

Tsuge is Japan’s largest and most internationally renowned pipe company, having been founded in 1936 by Kyoichiro Tsuge. In the 1970s, however, Tsuge himself was so impressed by the pipes coming out of Denmark, that he sent two of Tsuge’s own master pipe-makers, Kazuhiro Fukuda and Smio Satou, to hone their craft under the likes of Sixten Ivarsson and Jørgen Larsen. Upon their return, the Tsuge Ikebana workshop was established so that Fukuda, Satou, and their apprentices would have the means to create high-grade Japanese pipes to rival even those being made in Europe’s pipe making capitals. Alongside the Ikebana workshop, Tsuge expanded its range of standard models to reflect the company’s new Scandi-Japanese style, including designs by Danish icons such as Jorn Micke and Geert Holbek.

Of all of the designs that Japan’s Tsuge company produces, the Tokyo is arguably the clearest representation of its first, founding debt to Scandinavian artisan pipe making. Typically long and slender, yet lightweight and easy on the jaw, and each being accented by a bamboo shank extension, there is a clear nod to Sixten Ivarsson and the Suhr’s milieu in each of them, even when the shapes used aren’t necessarily 1-1 to 1 copies. The “502,” for example, is a lightweight, slender, stacked Dublin with a bamboo shank extension, with a clear nod to the Danish artisan briars of the 1950s and ’60s. The reserved finishing is similarly appropriate for such an homage, with this one wearing a lightly applied—though no less ring-grained—dark brown sandblast.

The condition is great. I wondered if the pipe might be unsmoked but, just to err on the side of caution, I’ll note it as lightly smoked at most.

Details:

Length: 6.5″ / 165.1mm

Bowl Width: 0.81 / 20.57mm

Bowl Depth: 1.99″ / 50.54mm

Weight: 1.3oz / 38g