Early Talbert Calabash

I was recently talking with someone about a calabash design, and it spurred my memory to look up this pic from 1999 (or perhaps 98, I'm not sure). It's an interesting early example of my particular design aesthetic, and I also noticed the flat bit. When I first began to make pipes, I made them 100% according to my own preferences in pipes, and among those preferences is a love of really thin, nearly buttonless bits, because I rarely hold a pipe in my teeth anyway. So, this is why most of the Talberts from the late 90's have these really flat bits. As I started selling to a wider and wider market, I eventually had to change my ways to adapt to different people's styles - especially in the two key areas of button size and bit thickness. The extremely thin bits that I loved proved too fragile in the wild when subjected to super-clenchers, and once you've done a couple of repair/replacements, you start changing your methods quickly!