Smooth Blowfish (900) Tobacco Pipe

Micah "Yeti" Cryder is known for his highly stylized designs, favoring a shaping style that's equal parts whimsical and sculptural. Such shaping results in individualistic designs, as evidenced by this striking interpretation of the Blowfish. The Blowfish is a notoriously difficult shape to craft, requiring a keen eye for detail and meticulous line work, but it's also an incredibly pliable shape that lends itself well to interpretation, and Cryder has taken full advantage of that pliability, producing a version that's singularly his own. Almost Oom Paul-like in its stance, this piece boasts a vertically oriented shank-and-stem arrangement that holds aloft an asymmetrical bowl. Said bowl is angled on its axis to evoke the look of a fish in motion, its fore orientated to the right, its aft orientated to the left. This angled posture is accentuated by a crisp ridgeline that outlines the bowl's frame, specifically its slanted orientation, and terminates at a splayed outcropping of briar that brings to mind a pectoral fin. The bowl's lopsided aesthetic continues through the shank and stem: the former unevenly bifurcated by its own ridgelines, the latter rendered in a half-saddle configuration. Mirroring the shaping, the finish here is unique and asymmetrical, with the entirety of the stummel wearing a glossy, grain-defining smooth finish, save for part of the bowl's left flanks, which boasts a rugged plain of dark plateau.