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A briar hit parade

I've been wondering whether to tell you who the world's top ten pipe producers are.

They are: Bo Nordh (no surprises, there), Savinelli, Mark Tinsky, Dunhill, Jess Chonowitsch, Grabow, Butz-Choquin, Castello, Preben Holm and a guy called Peter Klein.

Some mix, hey?

That's why I've been hesitant to tell you about them. You're going to ask me for stringent criteria, and I'm going to answer that stringent criteria are a cop-out. They only serve to confuse the issue. Since when do hit parades get based on stringency?

Come on, any Top Ten - of music, cars, films or beaches - is a very temporary and coincidental affair. It is founded on the considered and unconsidered values of dorks and sages alike, of veterans and newbies, and even of many people who don't really care very much. The standards for success are diverse and incoherent. Half of the story is about people's fleeting moods.

Get it? A Top Ten is nothing at all special, so it's up to you to stop reading right now - or to get your knickers untwisted for an entirely unbalanced and unscientific experience. If you must really know how I went about selecting those names, I'll tell you that it took all of five minutes. I simply threw random perceptions of what different types of people enjoy into a bucket of water, then examined those that floated to the top. All I can say about this method is that it appears to work well, if you don't overrate its trustworthiness.

Be that as it may, I think the choices I've made are about as reasonable as any others. To me, that is the mark of an authentic Top Ten.

Couples

Some of the names I have come up with arguably belong to the same category. The biggest surprise was which they were. A few of the makers seemed to pair themselves off for reasons not commonly noticed, but they chose each other so convincingly that I didn't have the heart to separate them.

Take Bo and Mark, for instance… yes, Mark. Judged from a certain angle, the two are most definitely twins, albeit unidentical. They are generally portrayed as wise, mature, fairly satisfied individuals that have found their niche and don't plan any major surprises. We get the feeling that we almost always know what they are doing at any particular point in time.

Despite the immeasurable price gulf between them, Tinsky and Nordh also serve the same type of audience - they perform to people whose ambition it originally was to own one of their pipes, and whose obsession it soon became to possess dozens. They are brands that shift the focus of a collection from wherever it was to themselves. The crazed king in The Last Unicorn would definitely have sympathised with a Bo/Mark lover. So would a Harley freak or a Zappa expert.

Though I admire both makers and can mostly understand the enthusiasm of their devotees, I am not sure why the degree of magnetism they exercise is denied to other pipes. It is strange, because you don't usually stumble across your first Bo or Tinsky in a shop (which is where most other briar love affairs start). Mark sells the bulk of his work via the Internet, and Bo ennobles certain individuals by agreeing to let them buy. So it's definitely an idea - at best a jpeg - that first puts you in touch with these carvers, rather than physical experience. You catch the whim, chew around on it for a few days or years, and then publish your purchasing plans to the entire world via some Internet forum: "I've raided my piggy-bank and have decided to order my very first Nordh/Tinsky. I am very proud of this decision. Can anyone point me to an online dealer?" Dozens of responses will ensure you that this is "the way to go, bro", and that Mark's pipes are to be found on his website, whereas a plebeian like yourself simply cannot buy a Bo at all.

Mythology

For single-minded customers, I could put Preben Holm in the same category, except that Bo and Mark smokers can generally communicate their spending rationale to more neutral pipesters, whereas Preben collectors require you to believe in the supremacy of their brand as a premise for having it more fully explained to you. To find their chatter at all coherent, a novice must first have a drink or three, and invest some wildly unfounded faith.

The late Preben Holm is therefore in a category of his own, serving happy little acid heads, who don't give a shit that you consider their personal Maharishi uninspiring. They hardly seem to care about money, either. Or maybe their creed involves spending a lot of it on fixed days of the lunar year. Why else should it invariably escape their attention when a PH on Ebay finds a new home for $69, while $1400 reserve prices act as the signal for all Prebenites everywhere in the world to go on a cash-burning spree? Oh, and why is Preben in the Top Ten? Because no one else commands such a perfect degree of irrational devotion - not in the pipe world, anyway. But do you remember Ten Years After?

At least Preben smokers aren't snobs - whereas many Dunhill and Castello aficionados definitely are. These two brands are included in this Top Ten as a tribute to people who gobble up marketing myths like: "You don't need to spend more, but you simply can't afford to spend less!" Such discerning nerds will preach that while a Dunhill or Castello incorporates everything that will ever be objectively known about pipe making, and is therefore justifiably expensive, it also resides right on the boundary between perfection and the obscenely overpriced. They will actually look down on you for owning such extravaganza as Bangs or Ivarssons, just as they disregard Stanwell smokers and pity those reduced to Petersons. But while the latter may be excused as impoverished gentry, the Bang collector is perceived as an alien form of life, possibly based on silicone and with needs quite unlike our own.

True Dunhill or Castello freaks are like those dreary people who believe that rock music will die with Eric Clapton (we also have Charatan junkies, who think that rock music already did crash to the ground with Lynyrd Skynyrd). But whatever their intolerable faults, they do have a point - or rather, they hold their convictions firmly enough to become a point unto themselves. You will never persuade a Dunhill-only guy to reconsider his own narrow-mindedness. Like a British Tory, he's dependant upon a strong and entirely populist structure of values inherited from some glorious past and never ever subjected to scrutiny, because you don't scrutinise the ruddy truth. Argue with him, and you will witness a show of effortless arrogance. He will simply stroll off to trim the roses.

One last point: He thinks he is discreet. He isn't. He's usually a pretty obnoxious show-off.

Cheapos

The opposite of a Dunhill snob is the inverted Grabow snob - an intensely irritating individual, not to be confused with people who simply own a Grabow or two. The latter come in all shapes and sizes, whereas the former is a true-blue asshole.

This Grabow lover aggressively believes that two holes and the attachment of a piece of hollow plastic suffice to transform a block of wood into a pipe. Such people know this, because it was already plain to their grandfathers, and because it is therefore "simple physics, you moron". On the same grounds, we must presume that they reject cell phones, flights to Mars and possibly even dishwashers; rejection being a very mild term for their insectoid way of swooping on other people's whims and fancies - especially such fellow humans who spend feasible sums on real, adult pipes. To return to musical comparisons: Grabows are The Monkees of the pipe world. No, they are a bad cover version of the New Seekers. It's hard to see why they inspire such combative loyalty - until you study the prigs that sing their praises: the kind of person that needs something unsupportable to espouse.

At a fleeting glance, you might consider a Savinelli collector akin to the Grabow un-snob, just a little more refined. But that would be totally unfair. Genuine Grabowites are militant bullies, they are loud and resentful, whereas most Savinelli smokers are simply nice people. They truly love their pipes - as others might love a decent sofa (yet never feel comfortable on a more expensive one, for fear of leaving coffee stains). They're all right, so leave them alone, okay? In terms of music, they appreciate ditties like Mull of Kintyre. You don't need to agree, but you can hardly feel offended.

Savinelli is in the Top Ten, because - like Grabow - they sell a whole lotta pipes. To me, this seems a pretty good reason, though not (of course) a universally valid one. It also solves a problem, which is that any discussion of good pipes is hard to resume, once you have mentioned Grabows. You need to create a buffer zone, or else you start philosophising about brands like Butz-Choquin.

Now, that's a firm that makes many nice enough pipes, but also those horrendous green ones - some with transparent stems, I think. It is for the latter that they qualify in this hit parade: pipes for the cheap sunglasses crowd, which seems to have grown uncannily vast. Catering for its latest fads is no mean feat, considering that the BC factory is seated somewhere in the Haut Jura Mountains of France, nested among the cave paintings and eagle droppings. You wonder where they get the nerve to produce pop art. Even more, you wonder what makes the effort so successful.

Perhaps they send someone to the youth hostels in the Côte d'Azur hinterland every summer, there to soak up sunshine and the latest violations of taste. Or to the Berlin Love Parade. But, however they manage to remain gauche, the BC people can be relied upon to churn out the 'accessoires' supposedly youthful dads like to stick in their faces when out pushing a pram. Get the message? "I may be a parent and I may have a mortgage and I may have receding hair and smoke a pipe, but I'm no fuddy-duddy yet. Look at this BC baby - cool, hey? Makes other pipes look like bits of old furniture, doesn't it?"

Hype pills

Since extended talk of such monstrosities tends to lose people who prefer good pipes, let's quickly switch focus to similarities between Jess Chonowitsch and the guy called Peter Klein - one global star and one regional German guru, both on full-strength hype pills. The fact that one is very, very good and the other consistently mediocre need not confuse us. Even Paganini was hyped, and so was Mozart. So, most probably, was a Mozart contemporary called Hans Weiss or something, though history has forgotten him.

On their respective scales, Klein and Chono are among the most over-discussed carvers in the world today, but it must be noted that this is hardly their own fault. Pipe hyping is generally not very effective when performed by people actually in the business. It takes a few of those so-called 'influential collectors' to do the job properly. Why the f*** their opinions are regarded as neutral and relevant is beyond me, but there it is: Get yourself a big collecting name, and people will take your every utterance as the voice of unbending expertise, rather than what it most commonly is - a sneaky attempt to add value and prestige to the pipes you happen to possess.

Granted, of course, that the Chono hype has been far more successful than praise for Peter Klein, whose fame is rather restricted and whose inclusion in this list only serves as an example (like when unknown deserving people get political prizes because it's time for the prize to go to a deserving unknown person). There are dozens of Peter Kleins - all semi-decent makers with fairly low price tags and a reputation for 'good value'. For every one of them, we witness a determined little army of disciples, intent upon mentioning their guy whenever conversation gets round to things you can put in your mouth.

I especially like the 'good value' bit, because it's so liable to become a concept stripped of any meaning. Does it infer a certain ratio of quality and price? Perhaps it should, but it doesn't. Is a Ramses imitation that looks like it's been in the garden all winter good value, just because it is cheaper than Bo's original? The answer, it appears, is yes. A bad draw, a sloppy finish, an overall lack of symmetry - these are all symptoms of 'good value', when the culprit is a bloke we like. General desirability is a factor rather lost in such conversations. Actually, even price itself is largely negligible.

Hopelessly, here's the truth: You can buy a rusticated Mänz for less than the price of a higher-end Peter Klein. The Mänz is very good value, because Cornelius is the better carver by miles. Therefore, the Klein isn't really good value at all. It is too bloody expensive, if you ask me.

Another hype-prone concept that's suffered a loss of definition is 'rarity'. Jess Chonowitsch is supposed to be exceedingly rare - which he isn't. Just now, I found about ten unsold Chonos on a single website. A few estates recently spent almost a month in a German Internet shop before they were purchased. Yet we all know that Chonowitsch is 'rare', and that his pipes get bought, smoked and locked up in safes years before he even makes them.

According to an authoritative German book, Jess makes about 250 pipes annually - no less than the late Steve Weiner's output and very considerably more than, say, Wolfgang Becker. He really isn't all that hard to get, you know. But does this detract from his 'rarity'? Very obviously not.

This is what puts Jess Chonowitsch and Peter Klein in a single category: Both wear labels that sane people no longer bother to contradict. Simple repetition makes their reputations firmly unassailable.

You can still get a Jess tomorrow by paying for it, but you may as well forget that I said that. In fact, you have probably already forgotten. After all, this is only a Top Ten. There will be a different one next week. Thank's for joining me tonight.

(Martin Farrent)

(March 28, 2004)

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