Black Sandblasted Bent Egg Tobacco Pipe

Claudio Cavicchi is not only a renowned pipe maker but also a renowned pipe smoker, having won the Committee International of Pipe Smokers Clubs' slow smoking world championship in 1993 by keeping three grams of tobacco lit for just over three hours and nine minutes. Cavicchi only took up pipe making full-time after a 30-year farming career, turning his first pipe when he decided to make his own Oom Paul rather than continuing to wait for delivery of one he already ordered. Cavicchi pipes are known for their superior grain, with former Pipes and tobaccos magazine editor Chuck Stanion remarking that their titular maker "can read briar as though it were a printed page."

This bent Egg from Cavicchi is fronted by a bowl that is almost Apple- or Billiard-like in its shaping, featuring a nearly straight aft and an only lightly tapered fore. The rich, dark waves of sandblast still allow for flecks of ruby-stained briar to peek out from underneath and provide a rich, smooth touch. A small spur sprouts from the underside of the shank just behind the bowl, with the rest of the shank flaring outward lightly as it stretches back to the junction. The stem is black acrylic, with the mouthpiece falling back from the top of a wide, mushroom-like platform. Light at just over one and one-third ounces and finished with fascinating linework, it's a piece made with great imagination.