Briar wood bowl, natural, height approx. 3 cm

These pipe bowls, manufactured in manual work, are handy and offer a high smoke benefit. In such a bowl is space for a tobacco mixture of the size of one cigarette.
Briar wood is the preferential rootwood of most wood pipe manufacturers. It had outstanding smoke characteristics and is very durable.

Briar is also known as "tree heath" and can be found in the Macchia, dry evergreen shrublands, all around the Mediterranean area, west to Portugal and the Canary Islands, and with disjunct areas in Africa including the Ethiopian Highlands, the mountains of Ruwenzori and the Cameroon mountains. It is harvested from the roots of the tree heath when the roots reach an age of 25 to 50 years.