Peter Stokkebye by Jorgen Larsen, Smooth Cobra Estate Briar Pipe, Danish Estates

Description

The Stokkebye family are giants in the tobacco world; their pipes are similarly renowned, but for a slightly different reason. This is because Stokkebye-brand pipes have been made, at different times, by different makers – typically, though not always, by Danish masters. Peter Stokkebye pipes were largely made by one seminal figure in Danish pipe-making by the name of Jorgen Larsen. Larsen began his career working for Stanwell, before embarking to create hand-made, high-grade pipes under his own name. A briar dust allergy would unfortunately cut Larsen’s career short, but not before he made his mark upon the high-grade scene, both through his pipes and through passing on his knowledge of pipe-making to figures such as Kazuhiro Fukuda and Smio Satou of the then-germinal Tsuge Ikebana workshop.

I’ve categorized this pipe as a cobra for the sake of simplicity and to “appease the algorithm,” as they say, but, as with many Danish masterworks that come across my desk, that name really doesn’t do it justice. I suppose you could call it a “cobra stack,” given that it takes the wide, flattened bowl profile of the cobra and extends it well beyond the shape’s common proportions. What is common to the cobra is the way the bowl has been shaped so as to feature wild, horizontal cross grain on its left and right sides, with plane of pure bird’s-eye brilliance at its fore.

The condition is great. Some rim darkening and a few minor handling marks.

 

Details:

Length: 5.5″ / 139.7mm

Bowl Width: 0.81 / 20.57mm

Bowl Depth: 2.13″ / 54.10mm

Weight: 1.7oz / 50g