Andreas Bennwik Smooth Bent Horn Handmade Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

Description

Andreas Bennwik is a Swedish artisan from the country’s capital, Stockholm. Bennwik has a background in sculpture and illustration, the latter of which still remaining one half of his working life. The other half is, of course, pipe-making. Bennwik’s journey into the craft followed a course common to many artisans: first, as a simple smoker and admirer of pipes; then, as a renovator of estates; then, as a hobbyist making his own pipes from pre-drilled kits. Bennwik’s emerging fascination with pipe design, coupled with a frustration with the limitations of using hobby kits, led him to pursue creating pipes properly by hand. In this pursuit, he received guidance from fellow Swedes and master pipe-makers Love and Sara Geiger, Bengt Carlson, and Jonas Rosengren, as well as one particular Dane who seems to have had a hand in raising most of today’s European greats in one way or another: Tom Eltang.

While horn as a material has been used in pipe-making for centuries, the horn shape is a thoroughly modern innovation, at least in the world of briar. In fact, it took a radical shift in how pipes are constructed for the horn to become a possibility in that craft. An absence of much of the radial symmetry found in traditional staples, such as the billiard or the Dublin, meant that shaping a horn had to be primarily achieved manually, through the use of a sanding disk or belt sander, rather than turning briar on a lathe. This was the shift inaugurated by the godfathers of modern, artisan pipe-making, such as Bennwik’s fellow Swedes Sixten Ivarsson and Bo Nordh, and their apprentices and admirers in post-war Denmark.

Bennwik’s horn, seen here, is not the same horn that captured Scandinavian pipes in the late-1950s and early-1960s. In contrast to Ivarsson’s and Nordh’s paneled Olifant renditions, Bennwik’s is more compact and ergonomic, having more in common with the functionalist leanings of Tom Eltang (see his Stanwell shape 108) and the organicism of Jess Chonowitsch (similarly, see Stanwell shape 145). A graceful and easy smoker if I ever saw one.

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

 

Details:

Length: 5.5″ / 139.7mm

Bowl Width: 0.71 / 18.03mm

Bowl Depth: 1.18″ / 29.97mm

Weight: 1.9oz / 54g