Sandblasted Pear with Bamboo and Boxwood (47/17) Tobacco Pipe

Quite a curious rendition of the Pear shape from Chris Asteriou, this piece features those highly organic cues we find in many of Sixten Ivarsson's earlier work, such as the Peewit shape, combined with a more modern stance and a bolder distribution of visual weight. While the bowl itself might immediately capture your attention, with its sharp spur and soft, balloon like flare towards its plateau-crowned rim, what Chris has done with the shank extension is what prevents me from putting this pipe back down.

Rather than use knuckly, gnarly rhizomes of bamboo (i.e. the part of the plant which grows underground), he's employed the Buddha variety (i.e. the part which grows above ground). What's curious is that traditionally this Buddha variety is of a much stouter style, often featuring various bulges in place of the rhizomes knuckles; here, however, we find a much trimmer variety of Buddha bamboo — featuring the medium's tell-tale softer, more polished style yet in a much more slender configuration than we'd typically expect. Either way, it works to great effect, offering the prefect natural contrast to the warmly stained, crisply sandblasted bowl.