Sebastian Heck Sandblasted Poker Handmade Briar Pipe, New

Description

Sebastian Heck is part of younger generation of highly skilled artisans to have emerged from Germany in recent years. Based in Heidelberg, Heck took up pipe smoking—and, ultimately, pipe-making—as part of a conscious effort toward slowing down in an otherwise constantly accelerating modern world. Like many pipe-makers, Heck took his first steps into the craft as a restorer of estate and heirloom pieces, which in time brought with it an expansion of his workshop and the tools housed within it. With this as a base, creating new pipes of his own was a natural progression. Heck’s development has been greatly influenced by the Danish and German schools of pipe design, and has included time spent learning directly from fellow German artisans, such as Dirk Heinemann.

While the poker is arguably one of the defining shapes of traditional Anglo-French pipe-making, it has also come to occupy a similar role in the far more modern design movements associated with post-war Denmark. While there are numerous examples of traditional shapes being reinvented and revitalized by artisans in Scandinavia and beyond, the evolution of the modern poker—and with it, certain other shapes such as the cutty—has been markedly different from, for example, that of the modern brandy or Rhodesian. While the latter are famous for their formal extravagance, it is the former’s functional properties that have have been the key to their renewal, with figures such as Tom Eltang leading the charge. This particular poker, by German artisan Sebastian Heck, combines the signature ergonomics of its traditional and modern exemplars with just enough aesthetic bombast to keep the design fresh without intruding on that essential functionalism. The result is a compact and relatively lightweight sitter, with a canted, conical bowl that blooms into a rim of bare plateau.

 

Details:

Length: 4.5″ / 114.3mm

Bowl Width: 0.68 / 17.27mm

Bowl Depth: 1.9″ / 48.26mm

Weight: 1.4oz / 42g