Lattice Carved Billiard Tobacco Pipe

While this Billiard is more of a reserved, classical piece from Konstantin Shekita, there's no mistaking it for the work of any other carver. Muscular of bowl and shank, with a trim line of saddle stem, it's one that really feels quite elegant as far as shaping goes. The real stunner is in the finish, however. Shekita is known for his latticework carvings, which require special tools to achieve, and are a "high risk, high reward" endeavor. By under-cutting and creating bridges of briar, he exposes not just the surface, but the underlying structure of the piece, in a process that can very easily go wrong. A single lapse in attention or slip of a tool might break one of the delicate bridges, rendering the entire stummel a loss — but here, he has achieved the work with supreme detail, creating large dots that are all interconnected, and giving the optical illusion of one bowl of natural briar being inset below the stained surface. Magnificently done.