Roland-Briars (Roland Schwarz)

Roland-Briars is the brand under which German pipe maker Roland Schwarz produces pipes bearing his own name. The brand emerged in the first half of the 2000s and is a typical example of the path from hobby to profession. Before he began producing, Schwarz had smoked a pipe for roughly thirty years, yet during all that time he had never taken an interest in how the pipe he used was made; his profession was not pipe making but media design.

From Repair to Production

What changed direction was a secondhand pipe collection given to him. Schwarz began accumulating and reconditioning these pipes in 2000. Repairing an estate pipe involves, on a small scale, many of the operations of production, from cleaning the chamber to reshaping the mouthpiece; this pursuit gradually turned into a desire to make his own pieces.

The decisive name in this transition was German maker Jan Harry Seiffert. Schwarz carved his first pipe under his supervision, and nearly all the pipes he made in his early period passed through Seiffert's review. The second guiding figure was Belgian collector Erwin Van Hove, whose contribution concerned not so much the technique of pipe making as when and to which circles the work should be announced. According to records, within two days of the brand's website going live, several well-known American and European enthusiasts had placed orders.

Approach to Making

According to the brand's own promotion, only long-rested plateau briar is used in production, and the bodies contain no fills. Mouthpieces are hand-shaped, with the bit left flat; for the tenon, teflon is preferred for its resistance to breakage. This choice runs in the same direction as the general approach among lathe-turned synthetic tenon materials.

According to a German-language review from January 2004, the pipes were made in two types, with and without a filter chamber, no lining was applied to the inside of the bowl, and the smoke channel ran centered along the shank, terminating at a hole at the bottom of the bowl. The same source notes that on some oval-shanked pieces, the mouthpiece was fitted so it could be rotated. At the time the pipes were not graded and were signed with a single stamp, the words ROLAND HANDMADE.

Position and Aftermath

Schwarz has positioned himself not as a high-grade master but as a maker working at the mid-tier; he has stated that what he intends to develop going forward is not technical craftsmanship but a shape language of his own. Contemporary community reviews found the internal construction and mouthpiece work of the pipes strong, while accepting that the style was still in a formative stage. The brand's pipes were never given to intermediary dealers, being announced solely through his own website. According to a note on Pipedia, this site has been inaccessible since 2012; whether the brand continues production cannot be traced through independent records.