1992 Tsuge Ikebana Sandblasted Billiard 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 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. 

A modest, traditional billiard might seem like a strange pipe to have come out of Tsuge’s Ikebana workshop, but this becomes less so when considering the lineage of its pipe-makers. Fukuda and Satou, for example, trained under Sixten Ivarsson. While Ivarsson was renowned for his highly innovative and imaginative shapes, he was at heart something of a functionalist. In other words, he thought that the functional properties of a pipe – its capacity to smoke well, and to be easy to handle and to take care of – should be the foundation of its overall design. Of course, one can build many beautiful creations on top of such a foundation, as Sixten and his acolytes did, but the smoke comes first. The billiard may well be the Platonic ideal of a briar pipe, as if it were stripped down to its bare essentials, and it’s one that Sixten continued to make and to refine until his final years. It’s also a shape that the Ikebana workshop’s Master Fukuda (who I believe will have made this pipe, judging by the year) continues to revisit – presumably, like Sixten, in search of the perfect smoking instrument. Aside from its expert engineering, this Ikebana also has a wonderfully executed, ring grain sandblast. After all, even if form follows function, that doesn’t mean the form can’t also be excellent.

The condition is good. There’s definitely some rim darkening and fading of the finish. I’ve priced the pipe to reflect this, though it should be kept in mind that none of this will affect how marvelously the pipe will smoke.

 

Details:

Length: 6″ / 152.4mm

Bowl Width: 0.68 / 17.27mm

Bowl Depth: 1.42″ / 36.06mm

Weight: 1.4oz / 40g