Adam Davidson 2010 Sandblasted Saucer Estate Briar Pipe, American Estates

Description

A graduate of industrial design and of a less formal apprenticeship under Todd Johnson, Adam Davidson has become one of North America’s most renowned artisan pipe-makers. Davidson initially worked with Johnson on his Medici pipes, while also being employed as a refurbisher for one of America’s leading pipe dealers. He then went solo, soon rising among the ranks of the American handmade pipe scene until he arrived at a stature comparable to contemporaries such as Johnson and Jeff ‘J. Alan’ Gracik.

Imagine you have a lump of putty in your hands. You can push the putty together or roll it into a ball and compress it, or you can pull at it so that the material stretches into whatever figure you desire. Now, imagine you have a block of briar. No matter how much you push or pull at it, it isn’t going to move or change in form. Even with a completed pipe, the result is the same: it’s just not going to budge. But what you can do is to take the idea of a pipe – of any design you like – and alter it in various ways. You could imagine a simple, tapered billiard and “pull” the shank and stem outward away from the bowl, and eventually you’ll get something like a Bing shape. Or, you could take a saddle billiard and “push” the stem back toward the bowl and, voila, you’ve got something like a Lovat. With this pipe, from Adam Davidson, I’m inclined to call it a “saucer,” but when I was researching it, I found that other pipes by Davidson had been termed “stretched,” such as a “stretched Dublin” that looked like exactly that: a Dublin whose basic form had been pulled apart and warped. This one, however, takes that “stretched” quality to the extreme, especially in the asymmetry of this outward movement, so much so that it would be hard to point to a shape that would have been the jumping-off point for Davidson’s imagination. Then again, these kinds of mysteries are half of the enjoyment when it comes to the radically new.

The condition is great. There’s some darkening on the innermost rim and some very light tooth chatter on the stem, but it’s evident that the pipe was looked after by its previous owner.

 

Details:

Length: 6.6″ / 167.6mm

Bowl Width: 0.85 / 21.59mm

Bowl Depth: 0.96″ / 24.38mm

Weight: 1.4oz / 40g