Ed Burak (Connoisseur)

Ed Burak is an American pipe designer who ran the Connoisseur Pipe Shop in New York for forty years. He generally did not carve his pipes with his own hands, instead having the shapes he drew executed by carvers he trusted; for this reason he is remembered in the community more as a designer than a maker.

From the Meerschaum Bench to the Design Table

Edward F. Burak was born in 1943 in the Bronx, New York; his first pursuit was not pipes but painting. A meerschaum pipe in need of repair led him in 1966 to the New York workshop of Austrian-born meerschaum carver Paul Fischer. Records indicate he stayed there for five years as an apprentice. The number of meerschaum pipes to come from his own hand in this period is small; a few are known to survive in collections. He is also reported to have designed for the Wally Frank brand in the same years. His purchase of the Connoisseur Pipe Shop in 1968 marked the start of building his own line.

Design Approach

Burak's catalogue moved along two tracks. On one side is the "Classics" line, which takes old Barling and Comoy's proportions as a base and reworks them in his own reading. On the other are the freehand designs that truly made his name; these fall outside the classic shape repertoire.

The most easily recognized trait of the brand is its surface treatment. Connoisseur pipes use no stain; the body is left in its natural tone, with only carnauba wax applied on top. Small surface flaws found in the briar are also left as they are, not filled.

Applying the designs to briar was left to outside craftsmen; the names cited among them include Joe Corteggione and Tony Passante. In later years Burak chose not to disclose the identity of the carver he worked with; this reticence created fertile ground for misattributions to circulate. Information in collector literature tying Connoisseur pipes to other firms' production lines is today considered incorrect.

Stamps and Dating

Connoisseur pipes fall into three periods by their stamps:

• From the late 1960s to 1974: unstamped production.

• 1974-1981: the stamp "CONNOISSEUR" with "N.Y.C." beneath it.

• After 1981: the same stamp with Burak's handwritten signature added.

This three-part division is considered the basic criterion for dating pieces circulating in the secondary market.

Influence and the Shop's Closing

Some of Burak's freehand pieces entered the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York; his designs also appeared in the American Craft Museum's travelling exhibition in the 1980s. The shape called "Eskimo" was thought, for years, to be far larger than it actually is, because of a blurry black-and-white photograph left over from that exhibition. Later research that reached the colour original of the photograph established that the pipe was about fourteen centimetres long. The assessment of the American handmade pipe scene, Go West, also counts Burak among the names who raised the standing of the American-made pipe.

The Connoisseur Pipe Shop, after changing address a few times in Manhattan, closed at the start of 2009. Production of Burak-signed designs ended at this date; the brand today can be traced only through pieces circulating in collections.