Smooth Tomato with Horn Tobacco Pipe

Here's an underlying form we've seen many times over the years: a squat, rounded bowl set to a neat transition and followed up with a flared, upward flicking shank, topped with horn. As familiar as it may be, that's not to say that each interpretation hasn't been unique. Ping Zhan, for example, has here executed the form in an intriguing and novel way. He's shaped the bowl broad and extra-squat, with an almost Acorn-like, rounded taper down to the base. The transition, while still neat and well-defined, is slightly sweeping and a touch stouter than you'd might expect, and the shank is charmingly abrupt — choosing to extend the composition not with extra briar, but with a generous and broad piece of completely pale horn. In profile, it maintains a rather low-slung aesthetic, with a stance that suggests a forward motion, as the down-turned stem appears to propel the entire composition forward.

- Andrew Wike