Smooth Apple with Bamboo and Boxwood Tobacco Pipe

An acutely tenacious fusion of the Danish and Japanese schools, this organically-inclined fellow from Ray Kurusu offers controlled asymmetry combined with something of a streamlined disposition and very smart use of negative space. With an undeniably tight spread of plateau crowning its plump, tidy bowl, it guides the eye to a three-knuckled stretch of light blonde bamboo, with each node operating in perfect rhythm with the piece as a whole. At the shank's end, Ray's employed a domed boxwood accent, the likes of which seem to cup the rounded base of its saddle stem. As for the stem itself, it does well to balance the visual weight of the bowl, and when viewed from above, the whole of it is compressed along the central axis, making a lenticular bird's eye view. Lovely work from Ray.