Herriot Pipes Smooth Stacked Poker Handmade Briar Pipe, New

In 2003, one of France’s preeminent pipe luminaries, Erwin Van Hove, jubilantly proclaimed, “Hallelujah! One of the very best American artisans has recently settled on French soil.” Two decades later, Antoine Grenard, director of Chapuis-Comoy and president of the Confrérie des Maîtres-Pipiers de Saint-Claude, oversaw the induction of another artisan originally from the Anglophone world into its hallowed brotherhood. Van Hove was, of course, welcoming Trever Talbert. The Confrérie, on the other hand, was welcoming Chris Herriot. Parallels between the two are difficult to ignore; both were outsiders who laid down roots in France and, crucially, thrived by it. Both forged connections with the Francophone pipe community, developing friendships and associations that would help them lay the foundations of their respective brands. And both would build something on these foundations that garnered them significant national and international acclaim. In Herriot’s case, this meant apprenticing under Bruno Nuttens (himself a former student of Pierre Morel and Tom Eltang), spending several days each week laboring in Nuttens’ Charpey workshop, and the rest of his time in his own. While one might think that Chris Herriot’s time spent studying with Tom Eltang would have had some influence on a pipe such as this one, those who have been following the former’s career over the years will know that he’s no stranger to classic, Anglo-French shapes. Herriot’s pipe making career began—as every pipe making career should—began with the classics, and it was his faithful renditions of traditional shapes, like the billiard, the Dublin, and the poker, that first brought him serious acclaim. And though he has certainly branched out into more “Danish,” or “Scandinavian”-style briars in recent years, he still turns plenty of classic shapes, just as he did when he first started out as a pipe maker. In this case, that takes the form of a very traditional poker sitter, with a narrow, stacked chamber, a hand-cut cumberland mouthpiece, and a deep red finish lighting up the bird’s-eye covering its bowl.   Details: Length: 5.8″ / 147.3mm Bowl Width: 0.72 / 18.28mm Bowl Depth: 1.73″ / 43.94mm Weight: 0.9oz / 28g