Smooth Canadian (444) Tobacco Pipe

Bill Shalosky has earned the respect of many smokers with his wonderful renditions of classic shapes. His Billiards are especially impressive, particularly when he adds some creative flare while maintaining the requirements of traditional standards. Here we have a spot-on Canadian, were the bowl half its height. The bowl towers above the low-set transition, rising in a statuesque, cylindrical form step by step up the horizontal strands of grain and speckled birdseye of the contrast-stained bowl. The oval shank reveals its own brilliant array of grain, streaks of cross grain running down its entire length. The palm-filling bowl is easy to grip, because there's lots of vertical surface area. This particular contrast stain is remarkable, highlighting and individualizing the multiple elements of the grain, and color coordinates with the cumberland mouthpiece as though approved by an interior decorator. It's a unified and angular composition, minimalist of line, slender of proportion, and impressive of disposition.