Butz Choquin Brumaire 1304 Smooth Bent Billiard Estate Briar Pipe, French Estates

With its origins in an 1858 collaboration between Jean-Baptiste Choquin and Gustave Butz, Butz-Choquin ultimately become one of the premier smoking pipe companies in 20th century France. The brand is known both for its stylish variations on traditional English-French shapes and for its exploration of atypical and elaborate finishes. The brand is also known for its collaborations with celebrated French pipe-makers, such as Paul Lanier and Alain Albuisson, who made some of Butz-Choquin’s highest-grade pipes for the company. Like the Danish pipe makers, the French also had a genre of so-called “Fancy” pipes, though the term meant something quite different for either. In Denmark, “Fancy” originally meant “modern,” but in the sense of unorthodox, freehand forms; in France, the “Fancy,” or “Fancy Bruyere,” also referred to novel designs, but the focus was on finishes. Fancy bruyeres wore unusually colorful, painted finishes, ones that were often very striking, and even psychedelic at times. This Butz-Choquin is one of a couple examples of such that came in together recently, with a rather avant-garde aesthetic that I would imagine was achieved through immersion printing (at least, in part). These days, the Fancy Bruyere is more of a “retro” thing, with pipes like this one being increasingly difficult to locate. The condition is fair. Some wear to the rim and chamber slightly over-reamed.   Details: Length: 6″ / 152.4mm Bowl Width: 0.81 / 20.57mm Bowl Depth: 1.61″ / 40.89mm Weight: 1.2oz / 36g

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