Tonni Nielsen Grade 7 Sparrow, Smooth Bent Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked [SOLD]

Description

A living legend in Danish pipe-making, Tonni Nielsen first began his career at the age of 16, at the historic W.O. Larsen workshop. Here he apprenticed under Hans ‘Former’ Nielsen and Teddy Knudsen, and within a few years, he was already carving Larsen’s high-grade Straight Grain pipes. After going solo and continuing his successes, Nielsen emigrated to Kentucky, in the United States, where he currently resides.

It is hard to go wrong with a Tonni, and this grade 7 cobra shape shows why. It is superbly carved, with the cobra’s hallmark ridges emerging smoothly from the bowl’s sides and trailing to its underside; here they meet and merge, becoming a single line that runs beneath the shank and dissolves before reaching its end. The grain is excellent too, with tight, vertical, ‘angel hair’ straight grain flowing around the bowl’s figure, and a mass of bird’s-eye towards the bottom of its fore. When this pipe was made, Tonni’s pipes were graded from 1-11 (though instead of ’11,’ Tonni used the ‘Viking’ grade), so this pipe is a high-grade even compared to Tonni’s other work.

The pips is completely unsmoked, with an original bowl coating by Tonni. It came to us via our trade-in program, along with its original leather sock.

 

Details:

Length: 5.7″ / 144.7mm

Bowl Width: 0.80 / 20.32mm

Bowl Depth: 1.45″ / 36.83mm

Weight: 1.8oz / 52g