Tsuge Kaga 901 Sandblast Bent Brandy Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

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 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 capitols. Fifty years later, it is eviden that this goal was accomplished. 

Tsuge’s Kaga series expresses a little known connection between Danish and Japanese pipe-making. Plenty are familiar with the relationship between Tsuge’s Ikebana carvers and the Danish masters of old; the 1970s exchange of pipe-making know-how between Kazuhiro Fukuda and Smio Satou and Sixten Ivarsson and Jørgen Larsen is the stuff of legend. But Tsuge also took inspiration from other makers, such as Gert Holbek and, in this instance, Jørn Micke. Micke was even more renowned in Japan than in Denmark, and his unique approach to shaping lies at the heart of the Kaga series’ aesthetic. The ring grain sandblast on this one is, as a side note, also just lovely. 

This Kaga came to us from a high-grade collector through our trade-in program, one who was careful enough to keep the pipe with its original box and sleeve. These come with the pipe, which is also completely unsmoked.

While most Kaga pipes Tsuge produces are for 9mm filters, this is one of the few non-filter versions.

 

Details:

Length: 5.3″ / 134.6mm

Bowl Width: 0.74 / 18.79mm

Bowl Depth: 1.17″ / 29.71mm

Weight: 1.5oz / 44g