Tsutomu Originals Smooth Asymmetric Dublin Estate Briar Pipe, Japanese Estates

Description

Fukashiro Tsutomu was one of Japan’s most esteemed and prolific pipe makers and proprietors, with a domestic customer base comparable only to the country’s other grand old brand, Tsuge. Tsutomu and his brother sold a large range of pipes out of the Ginzu Kukusui pipe shop they owned in Tokyo, but it is Tsutomu’s own handmade, high-grade works that brought him the most acclaim. Alongside contemporaries such as Hiroyuki Tokutomi, Kazuhiro Fukuda, Smio Satou, and Kei-Ichi Gotoh, Tsutomu was a key figure in the emergence of a distinctly Japanese approach to briar pipe design. Greatly inspired by the masters of modern, Scandinavian post-war pipe making, as well as a more traditionally Japanese aesthetic philosophy, the new Japanese artisan movement would once again push at the boundaries of what a tobacco pipe could be.

This particular pipe, from Tsuomu’s high-grade Originals series, is an exemplar of the aforementioned movement in a few ways. For one, its shaping exhibits the hallmark aleatory and asymmetrical motions that have been associated with Japanese handmades since they arrived on the world stage. But perhaps most strikingly is the pipe’s finishing, which incorporates classically Japanese techniques that have, historically, been quite uncommon even among Japan’s most prominent pipe makers. Aside from Smio Satou, Tsuge, and a few other, recent artisans in the wider Asian artisan scene, Tsutomu has been one of the few pipe makers known for incorporating lacquer into his designs. In this instance, he is far closer to Satou than to Tsuge or, for example, Zhang Guohui, who have used more traditional Japanese and Chinese lacquer painted finishes respectively. Instead, and in a manner not unlike one of Satou’s signature finishes, Tsutomu has here employed a mixture of lacquer and the standard dyes and/or oils used in the staining of briar, resulting in a glossy, high-contrast sheen.

The condition is very good. Some minor inner rim charring.

 

Details:

Length: 5.8″ / 147.3mm

Bowl Width: 0.81 / 20.57mm

Bowl Depth: 1.05″ / 26.67mm

Weight: 1.6oz / 48g