Danish Influence?

General pipe discussion
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bregolad
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Joined: Fri Jan 08, 2010 3:00 pm
Location: irvine, ca

Re: Danish Influence?

Post by bregolad »

I think for most people on this forum, Danish, English and Italian are fairly well understood schools. Obviously, there's loads of variations and deviations from themes. The heavy Italian heel, the efficiency of the English (which actually is quite hard to mimic and most handmade carvers do not or cannot always create shapes like dunhill, because the process of fraising creates different results than handshaping, or even handturning) or the lithe and feminine shapes of the Danes.

American school is difficult to nail down, but to me, whatever school its derived from, it is more muscular and more masculine in proportions. I'm not referring to most of the pipes I see here, only because most of us haven't found a aesthetic voice yet. I refer to the works of Jody Davis, Todd Johnson, Jeff Gracik, Tyler Lane, Rad Davis, etc. To some extent, Cornelius Maenz falls in this catagory in my mind. The concept of a nosewarmer, with its monstrously oversized proportions, seems like an american idea. Unless it was askwith. That guy.

When I stare at pipes, my time is pretty equally split between Danish, Italian, English, American, Japanese. The thing that the American school does, from what I can tell, is riff on established shapes by making them more...muscular. That's the only word I can think of that describes it. I think the Danes and Italians are content with their shaping pallete for now. I think during the next few decades we'll see a great dissemination of aesthetics as the interweb continues it's march towards the hive mind.

Color is something else. Danish pipes are brownish orange with few accents and ebonite stems. No exceptions. Italians are more gaudy, using lucite in strange ways, and as with everything seeming to use the attitude of "this sounds like a cool idea, drink some wine then go try it." And people love it. So we (americans) stole the shapes and colors of our four bears and made them our own. But they really are ours now. I don't think the four bears want them back after what we've done to them, but the Russians do. Man did they keep the ball rolling.

TL&DNR Danish: lithe, lean. Italian: gaudy, voluptuous. English: severe, practical, lean. American: Their interracial bodybuilding grandchild.
J&J Pipes
jnjpipes.com
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