If you haven’t yet heard of the name Eric Paulson, I believe you will soon enough. Eric is a maker of pipes from the Minneapolis, Minnesota area and according to hit website has been making custom pipes since sometime in 2010. Browsing his wares, he seems to be interested in various forms, but it’s his version of the Devil Anse that has garnered him a lot of attention.
In fact, I’ve seen his name crop up a lot recently on several forums, especially over at Pipes Magazine. Recently, on their Pipes Magazine Radio Show (Episode 75), two large names in the industry were interview. One, being Sykes Wilford who is the head honcho over at Laudisi Inc., which include the operations of SmokingPipes.com and Cornell & Diehl. The other being Rick Newcombe, better known as the author behind In Search of Pipe Dreams. In this discussion on pipe makers, Newcombe name dropped the artist…which to me is a rather big deal, given his passion of the art, even to the point of having a talk dubbed Pipe Smoking in the Movies at this year’s Chicagoland International Pipe Show. He had quite a bit to say about Eric and his style and take on the Devil Anse.
Naturally, I became curious. I started to dig a little deeper on the forums to see what work Paulson has done, as well as scoped out what he has posted himself. Luckily, he had a handful of pipes available at a reasonable price. I debated and debated and eventually settled upon a rusticated/sandblasted straight billiard. I bit the bullet and added the pipe to my cart. Keep in mind this was on a Friday. On Monday, I had this beauty of a pipe waiting for me on my doorstep.
This thing is hefty! It comes at six inches and has one heck of a bowl. Normally, I’m not a fan of full-blown rusticated pipes. This one, however, I adore. It doesn’t have the chunky, tar-like finish I see time and time again. Instead it’s textured just enough to give my hands something to play with while I smoke. The stem is also quite beefy, more so than any other pipe that I own. Yet, it sits comfortably between my teeth with no complaints.
The finish of this pipe is a nice red and dark brown/black swirl. It’s honestly well put together. It fits a pipe cleaner from stem to bowl with no problems. It’s well balanced. In fact, the only issue I had with this pipe was deciding what I was going to put in it.
The bowl itself has a huge chamber…and I do mean huge. So, whatever I want to put in it would have to be something I don’t mind long smokes of. In the end, I settled on using it for my Virginia and Virginia/Perique blends. Breaking it in slowly but surely is going to be a task, as I simply want to fill it to the brim and fire it up, but it’s a virgin chamber with no carbon coating so I need to be cautious.
All-in-all, I’m impressed with his work. So much in fact, I’ve already been in contact with him about commissioning one of his Devil Anse pipes. Actually…two of his Devil Anse pipes. One for myself and one for my father. Check him out and just what he can do here: www.EricPaulsonPipes.com and see for yourself. He’s pleasant to work with and for what he does, he offers his pipes at a very decent price.
The Rustic Briar 