Julius Vesz Hand Cut B Magnum Freehand Estate Briar Pipe, Canadian Estates

Description

Hungarian-Canadian artisan Julius Vesz carved his first pipe all the way back in 1959, and continues making pipes today in the 2020s. With 60 years of experience in the craft, he is recognized as one of the most seasoned and skilled pipe-makers around, counting among his admirers luminaries such as Richard Carleton Hacker, who remarked upon the ‘rare elegance’ inherent to Vesz’s work.

It’s a rare sight to see plateau briar cut so that the plateau faces forward, rather than upward, in the shaping of a pipe. But it isn’t unprecedented – in fact, there’s one very notable precedent for using plateau in this way, that being some of the oldest Straight Grain pipes to come out of the W.O. Larsen workshop. Did those pipes inspire this one from Julius Vesz? Who knows. But, like Sven Knudsen and co. at the early Larsen workshop, Vesz clearly knows that straight grain can be just as beautiful and appropriately used when angled horizontally, rather than vertically, and that a pipe’s rim is not the only place that briar root plateau can feel at home.

The condition is great. There’s a little rim darkening, but nothing major. Though I probably don’t need to tell you twice, I’ll say it anyway: this is a very large pipe.

 

Details:

Length: 7.4″ / 187.9mm

Bowl Width: 0.92 / 23.36mm

Bowl Depth: 2.98″ / 75.69mm

Weight: 8.3oz / 236g