Tsuge Shiki Haru Smooth Dublin 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 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 Scando-Japanese style, including designs by Danish icons such as Jorn Micke and Geert Holbek.

Tsuge’s “Shiki” series was a limited edition run of pipes intended to celebrate the four seasons, with each pipe in the series named for one of those seasons. There was the Shiki “Natsu” (Japanese for “summer”), the Shiki “Aki” (“fall,” or “autumn” for non-Americans), the Shiki “Fuyu” (“winter”) and, seen here, the Shiki “Haru” (“spring”). Being Tsuge, the pipe designs were less thematic, and more in the way of the make’s signature Scandinavian-Japanese synthesis. This Haru, for example, is a recognizably Danish-inflected bent Dublin, with a wide rim and a masterful expression of the briar’s straight grain and bird’s-eye. On a last note, the Shiki series is a personal favorite of mine, not least because they have some of the most comfortable stems I’ve ever clenched.

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

 

Details:

Length: 5″ / 127.0mm

Bowl Width: 0.80 / 20.32mm

Bowl Depth: 1.45″ / 36.83mm

Weight: 1.4oz / 40g