Jerry Zenn: Partially Sandblasted Dublin with Bamboo Tobacco Pipe

Jerry Zenn is a artisan pipe maker from Kaohsiung, Taiwan, who spent 25 years as an automotive mechanic before taking up the craft. His years working with his hands and with specialized machinery aptly prepared him for the task of pipe making, and over the years, he's developed quite the reputation for his work. He takes obvious inspiration from the Danish and Japanese schools of design, but he renders his pipes with a certain matter-of-fact precision that makes them singularly his own.

Bamboo has been utilized in pipe making since World War II, when briar was in short supply and manufactures had to find a way to make their limited stockpiles last. Bamboo became a cheap, efficient way to stretch their supplies, and over time, the organic material became an aesthetic choice instead of a purely utilitarian one. Three knuckles of the dense grass extend the shank of this Dublin and provide a visual rhythm to the aft side of the composition. From the transition to the shoulders of the saddle stem, each knuckle is evenly spaced, drawing the eye across the slender build of the shank and mouthpiece. The bowl is somewhat broader and more rounded at its flanks than typical renditions of the shape, though the form's flared rim and downward taper are still intact. A ruddy sandblast dresses the flanks of the bowl and coaxes out neat stacks of growth rings that build toward a smoothly polished rim populated with birdseye.