Ropp: Ruby Sandblasted Large Bent Billiard Tobacco Pipe

In this bent Billiard from Ropp, the French marque deftly balances the proportions between bowl and S-curve. Though the bowl is quite large compared to Ropp's other offerings — on par with, say, a Dunhill Group 5 or 6 — the elongated stretch of shank and stem and the resulting swan neck-like curve effectively balance out the bowl's height and substance. It makes for a striking profile, beautifully combining flowing elegance and firm austerity for a shape that's reminiscent of English and French bent Billiards from the early 1900s.

Ropp's Ruby line presents a more colorful palette than the French marque's other series, dressing each pipe in a crimson sandblast. Such a stain hearkens back to old-school French and English pipes, and the retro style is furthered by the inclusion of new old-stock stems of genuine horn — a mouthpiece material used extensively in the early 1900s. Though the horn stems also call to mind Ropp's Vintage, Vintage Stout, and Vintage Superior series, the Ruby prioritizes darker-hued horn for a deeper, warmer aesthetic that pairs handsomely with the scarlet stain of the stummel. Furthermore, unlike the Vintage lines, Ropp's Ruby offers both straight and bent shapes: While vulcanite and acrylic are relatively easy to bend, requiring only heat, horn is much more unruly, needing both heat and prolonged pressure to ensure the bent shape holds. To fashion the Ruby's bent pieces, then, Antoine Grenard, who runs the old Chapuis-Comoy factory in Saint-Claude, France, went so far as to use a vintage stem-bending machine from the Chapuis-Comoy pipe museum, thoroughly cementing the Ruby line's vintage appeal.