Mike Couch Smooth Blowfish w/ Spalted Tamarind Estate Briar Pipe, American Estates

Description

I’ve been wondering when we might get one of Mike’s pipes through our estates trade-in program. He’s been making pipes for about 10 years now, but his production remains fairly limited the pipes he does make are pretty hard to get your hands on—and in my line of work, pretty hard to get people to give them up. It’s not difficult to see why, either. This is one of his blowfish shapes, which I’ve found he does extremely well, while keeping each a little different. This is a slightly smaller one, with a spalted tamarind accent and, of course, a hand-cut ebonite stem. It has excellent shaping, incorporating a little of the Japanese-inspired asymmetry of contemporary artisan renditions, while keeping a firm sense of order and purposiveness in the resulting figure. It also makes excellent use of briar grain, with the shape’s signature, convex side panels being completely covered in bird’s-eye, and the flattened planes between them striated with cross-grain. Everything is beautifully tied together.

-J.M.

 

The condition is great, too. Some very minor inner rim darkening, but nothing major at all. The pipe was clearly well looked after.

 

Details:

Length: 4.8″ / 121.9mm

Bowl Width: 0.74″ / 18.79mm

Bowl Depth: 1.07″ / 27.17mm

Weight: 1.6oz / 46g