1997 American Smoking Pipe Company (Tinsky) Freehand Dublin Estate Briar Pipe, American Estates

Description

The American Smoking Pipe Company was founded in 1978 by artisans Mark Tinsky and Curt Rollar. Tinsky and Rollar’s venture was part of a new wave of North American hand made pipe making that emerged in the 1970s and ’80s, including artisan carvers such as Mike Butera, Tim West, Elliot Nachtwalter and Jorg Jemelka. Despite the name, American Smoking Pipe Co. was not a factory or large scale operation, but a simple pipe workshop and name shared between friends. Rollar departed the company in 1990, after which Tinsky remained at the reins into the 2000s, before selling his pipes under his own name.

While Mark Tinsky’s contemporary output tends toward set, reproducible shapes and even a standardized catalog, the pipes he (and Curt Rollar) made in earlier decades were more freeform in design. Tinsky was after all, part of the great American freehand movement of the later 20th century, which was significantly inspired by the post-war Danish artisan scene. This particular Tinsky, made a few years after Rollar departed from their American make, is a very nice, large, freehand Dublin. It’s clearly been carved to maximize the flame grain and bird’s-eye patterns in the briar, though it doesn’t abandon conventional shapes wholesale. Curiously, this Tinsky-made American has a reverse threaded tenon that is original to the design.

The condition is very good. Some inner rim darkening and minor handling marks.

 

Details:

Length: 6.2″ / 157.4mm

Bowl Width: 0.94 / 23.87mm

Bowl Depth: 2.17″ / 55.11mm

Weight: 3.3oz / 96g