Bennie Joe Partially Rusticated Acorn Handmade Briar Pipe, New

Description

Bennie Joe Pipes are made by Bennie Joe, an Indonesian artisan based in Jakarta. A trained architect and part-time pipe-maker for much of his life, he took on the latter full-time after a downturn in the property market during the dark days of 2020 and after. An interesting aspect of Bennie Joe pipes is that they are made primarily with hand tools, rather than many of the woodworking machines pipe-makers employ. While the chambers and draft holes are drilled, the body of the pipe is formed using hand tools, creating genuinely freehand shapes reminiscent of those made in mid-century Denmark. It should come as no surprise that one of Bennie Joe’s heroes is the late, great, Bo Nordh.

There’s certainly more than a little of Lars Ivarsson in the shaping of this pipe, but it also reminded me of another master carver who was greatly influenced by Ivarsson, and who took Ivarsson’s shapes in unique directions, that being Todd Johnson. It’s Todd Johnson’s blending of finishes when it came to variations on Ivarsson’s shapes that is the point of reference here; more specifically in alternating finishes for the bowl and shank section. With Johnson, the design would be worked in a way that it almost seemed like the bowl was being “unwrapped,” or even as though it was bursting forth from the shank. With this Bennie Joe, the rusticated bowl looks almost as if the rind of the pipe has been peeled away, exposing a coarser, wilder entity lurking just beneath the surface.

 

Details:

Length: 5.5″ / 139.7mm

Bowl Width: 0.77 / 19.55mm

Bowl Depth: 1.43″ / 36.32mm

Weight: 1.9oz / 54g