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Two bamboo pipes commissioned from Steve Liskey“Why would anyone want to put bamboo with briar?”

I’ve heard these words more than once – sometimes from prominent collectors. I’ve even heard them in my mind’s ear as I wondered the same thing, myself.

Ever since Sixten Ivarsson married briar to bamboo during World -War-Two while trying to make use of in-short-supply briar blocks, many have posed the same question: “Why bamboo?”

I’m not sure when I had a change of heart. I do know that bamboos are now among my favorite pipes to smoke and admire.

Bamboo – a material I used to consider tawdry and cheap – is now as character-filled and fascinating to me as briar. The range of colors, textures, and characters one can encounter in the approximately 1,450 species of bamboo is astonishing. Bamboo can be as quiet, distinguished, and elegant as ivory or ebony. It can also be as gnarly, gritty, and funky as a Newark railroad bridge. While I love both extremes, I find myself increasingly drawn to bamboo with distinctively gritty and gnarly character. I enjoy the contrast that exists when dissimilar materials exist in counterpoint.

To create a seamless shank extension using bamboo is not easy nor without its painstaking moments as any artisan who uses bamboo will tell you. This is why one sees some beautifully grained or exquisitely sandblasted briar in bamboo pipes. Mediocre blocks are not worth the trouble.

Bamboo Apple by Michael LindnerPerhaps because bamboo was initially used as a way to extend a pipe shank, bamboo can often look like a crude interloper in an otherwise elegant composition. Used poorly, there is no relationship between the bowl height or width, the foreshortened shank length, and the distance between knuckles. Used artfully, the distance between the bowl shank transition and the first knuckle will mirror one another, setting up a visual rhythm that is often terminated with a final vulcanite knuckle. The best saddle stems continue the visual repetition by being as long as the distance between knuckles. In summary, in the best bamboo pipes, the bamboo dictates the overall composition, or it is a reflection of the existing proportions of the stummel.


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