1998 ASPC by Mark Tinsky, Sandblasted Bent Apple 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.

I find this pipe from Rollar and Tinsky’s American Smoking Pipe Company, made after Rollar’s departure, to be a fitting example of that transitional period in Tinsky’s career between the split with Rollar and the establishment of the contemporary Tinsky catalog. On the one hand, it shows a movement toward the more classical shapes that define the majority of Tinsky’s contemporary output; on the other hand, it has a rough-and-ready aesthetic more in line with the spirit of Tinsky’s – along with other carvers of his generation – rise in the 1980s. It is both elegant and eminently utilitarian – a smoking machine with more than a touch of class.

The condition is excellent. There is perhaps a touch of rim darkening, though the pipe’s dark burgundy stain makes this difficult to judge, but nothing I would consider major. The pipe also comes with its original leather sleeve.

 

Details:

Length: 5.5″ / 139.7mm

Bowl Width: 0.86 / 21.84mm

Bowl Depth: 1.42″ / 36.06mm

Weight: 2.1oz / 60g