Smash yer piggy banks boys......

Brothers of Briar

Help Support Brothers of Briar:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
As hard as Bear tries to sell the concept, I don't think a Canadian-shanked Danish Scoop works. I can see why Lars made it that way---the grain goes on forever---but the shape & balance suffered for the sake of the wood, imo.
 
At the risk of coming of like an elietist snob, I've been after an Lars for a couple of years now. When the right one comes around I'll buy it on the spot. As one would expect, the grain on this pipe is just fantastic. I really, REALLY don't like the shape of it though. There's something kinda pahellic about it. It's a little creepy :lol:
 
Danish_Pipe_Guy":u79byr90 said:
There's something kinda pahellic about it. It's a little creepy :lol:
Thank you for saying this first... I thought the same thing. That very rounded shank-stem transition does it.
 
LL":xyxgtihm said:
As hard as Bear tries to sell the concept, I don't think a Canadian-shanked Danish Scoop works. I can see why Lars made it that way---the grain goes on forever---but the shape & balance suffered for the sake of the wood, imo.
I mostly agree with you. There's something about the shank of this piece, and the treatment of the mouthpiece, that drives the lines towards stasis, making it look very much like a sausage - in fact, very much like a pølse, a long, thin Danish sausage. I prefer my pølser on bread, not on a pipe. ;)

I'm actually surprised to see this come from Lars's hands, as his treatment of long, sweeping shanks is usually much more elegant, flowing and dynamic.

The wood truly is gorgeous, though. BUT, when it comes down to it, I'd always choose shape over grain. A beautifully cut pipe of flame grain will always appeal to me over a less than exquisitely cut pipe of spectacular wood.

Of course, considering the price, and the fact that there are not nearly enough Kroner in my piggy bank, it's completely academic, anyway.

-glp
 
I gotta agree, it's a weird looking shape. If the shank had been cut shorter and a nice graceful stem cut to create a more traditional Danish scoop it would have been an awfully dramatic pipe. My initial :affraid: was that it even showed up on SP at all, given the rarity of his pipes these days. On the one hand I'm surprised it's still not sold, on the other, it may be the weirdness of the shape that explains why it even showed up there at all...... The folks on his short list passed? :suspect:
 
Puff Daddy":c8lxz182 said:
it may be the weirdness of the shape that explains why it even showed up there at all...... The folks on his short list passed? :suspect:
I agree, it is the shape and as said above I would choose a shape that I fancy with a nice to mediocre grain over a shape that I don't like at all, even if the grain is the most perfect straight grain.
 
Mikem":5o3epbe2 said:
Don't know how much it went for but it's sold already.
It was ca. $5500. I'm glad to know it found an appreciative home.

When I saw the price, I paid attention to my reaction. I suspect we all have similar reactions to prices, though they are slid up and down a logarithmic monetary number line.

For instance, when I see a pipe that I really like for $50, and I have the money to spare, I don't hesitate too much. At $100, I think about it before making a decision. At $200, I think a lot. By $400, it's at the point where I may dream about it, but the pipe is not likely to find its way to my collection, unless I have other pipes I'm ready to sell off or trade away. Keep going up the scale, doubling the price each time - $800, $1600, $3200... You get the idea. These prices are all about double what they were ten years ago, when you could still find a wicked cool estate GBD New Era, or even a Virgin for $25-$35 or so.

Anything up to about $1500, I can actually comprehend. Beyond that, my synapses start to ache. I can understand it, from the perspective of market economics - it's worth what someone will pay, and all that. I can even understand why someone would pay that kind of money for a treasured pipe. But, there's another component.

Someone just made a decision to buy a pipe for over $5000 after it had been on the site for about a day. That's somewhere between my $100 and $200 category. Amazing. I think my car is worth just a little more; my entire GBD collection is probably worth somewhat less.

I guess what I don't understand, though I'd truly like to understand it someday, is how someone can pay that much for a pipe so apparently easily.

I really hope the buyer smokes my tobaccos. ;)

-glp
 
Mr. Pease emulated my thoughts exactly, except he was much more articulate and gentlemanly in his remarks! My thoughts contained much vulgarity! As this is not the "Rubber Room," I'll just keep them to myself! With great restraint :pipe: FTRPLT
 
Well, I have heard from the mouths of more than a couple collectors "I'll grab up the first unsmoked Ivarsson I can get my hands on". New unsmoked pieces are just damned near impossible to get and to an uber-high grade collector, an Ivarsson represents a pinnacle piece in a collection. I gotta admit though, even if I had that kind of dough to just throw out there it would be hard to deal with the opposing urges to 1) snatch it up before someone else does and 2) think about it long enough to know that it was the right piece for me.

I have a friend whose said the same about Bo Nordh - "If I could just get my hands on one..." But then when it's time to reach into the pocket and pull out 5 G's or more I guess that little guy sitting on your shoulder starts whispering "Are you sure?". There are a couple of Nordhs on Tom Lookers site, he knows about em, they've been there a while, so clearly the urge and the justification struggle within us.

It's all fantasy to me because I couldn't/wouldn't, even if all of a sudden I could. Not with kids at home anyhow. I have several pipes that I paid around $400 apiece for, and those were struggles to justify to myself even though I had the money. I own exactly 1 pipe that I paid dearly for (the Bang at $800) and I could only justify that by the fact that I had worked a whole lot of saturdays in a year when I'd done well anyhow and had managed to put that much aside while looking for just the right special piece. I could see adding 2 or 3 more pipes like that at some point over a period of a few years, but there sure as heck wouldn't be too many.....

It is fun to look though :D
 
The whole hesitation/money thing is a non-issue. There just happen to be a number of pipe smokers in the world who are truly wealthy. As in ART collector wealthy. The kind of people who can afford to restore fleets of half-million dollar cars, and own 20 million dollar yachts. The most expensive pipes in the world aren't even on their financial radar.

Not all who collect Nordhs, Ivarssons, etc. are truly loaded, of course, but it only takes two. ;)
 
LL":upu7168n said:
The whole hesitation/money thing is a non-issue. There just happen to be a number of pipe smokers in the world who are truly wealthy. As in ART collector wealthy. The kind of people who can afford to restore fleets of half-million dollar cars, and own 20 million dollar yachts. The most expensive pipes in the world aren't even on their financial radar.

Not all who collect Nordhs, Ivarssons, etc. are truly loaded, of course, but it only takes two. ;)
Yeah, what he said. I remember a couple of years ago, talking on the phone with a man who was buying one of my pipes, $395 if I remember correctly. I told him what I tell all customers, that he should have a good look when it arrived, that it wasn't sold unless he was happy. "Look," he said, "You're not getting it back. I have a couple hundred pipes, and four hundred bucks is like a Snickers bar to me."

So it comes down to the fundamental unshareability of human experience. Four hundred bucks is like, oh, about four hundred Snickers bars to me. I'm glad that the 5.5g Ivarsson sold, though. And I'm glad the 8.8g Nordh Ramses sold, too. I reckon if there's a market for pipes like that, there's gotta be a market for pipes like mine.

Jack
 
Top