Joura: Smooth Bent Billiard (Infinity B) (1994) Tobacco Pipe

Karlheinz Joura is an interesting specimen as a pipemaker, not even getting into his highly unusual backstory as an escapee from East Germany. He's a pipemaker who's been around, and highly respected, for a long time, but who didn't really break out of the European market until after 2000, which meant he came to wider attention right as a lot of (often young) American artisans were also gaining attention. Had Karl been set in his ways design-wise, that timing might have proven unfortunate.

Fortunately however, Joura doesn't appear to have gone in for standing still. Six years ago Karl made lovely pipes, and today he makes lovely pipes, yet looking at those in our archives from even that modest number of years ago, and looking at these latest pieces, given no other information I likely couldn't have guessed they were by the same artisan. He still favors classic bowl types and fairly deep, well-defined transitions (as you see here), but stems, shank shaping, even his finishes have all moved on.

- Eric N. Squires

A note on the "1994" stamp: This indicates a pipe shaped from particularly well-aged briar Karlheinz Joura originally acquired in 1994.