Smooth Shield with Horn (1351) Tobacco Pipe

Greek artisan Chris Asteriou's work displays a deep love for timeless classics of both Danish and Anglo-French design, his renditions of chart-standard shapes always showing reverence to the shaping pioneers that came before him. His career as an architect and education in industrial design have afforded Asteriou a remarkably refined sense of style, one that centers around compositional balance, cleanliness of line, incredible finishing work, and fantastic function. The Shield is a shape pioneered by Swedish artisan Bo Nordh, belonging to the same general family as the Elephant's Foot and showcasing a similar look, though with a slight refocusing of line. The Elephant's Foot features a panel and twin ridges that split its bowl into broad fore and aft panels, usually with more emphasis on the fore. The Shield, however, eschews the panel, most of the time, in favor of a single ridgeline, with almost all of the shaping emphasis placed directly on the bowl's fore. Here, Asteriou has achieved the Shield's remarkably challenging shaping with ease, pairing the recognizable bowl to a slim shank that lifts and tapers into a comfortable angle out back, meeting a rather lengthy fitment of horn that flares toward a domed end and flat face. This face is inlaid with a ring of brass, creating a sturdy push-mount for a long, sleek, demurely curved saddle stem that poises this pipe for comfortable smoking and infuses it with considerable dynamism and gracile charm. The bowl itself is plump and supple, with a soft Egg-like outline and a delightfully rounded aft side, making for a comfortable feel in hand. A flattened heel supports the walls and, while it doesn't allow this pipe to stand poised on a desk, it provides more than enough support alongside the stem to allow this pipe to sit stably while leaning back on its aft side combination. The framing ridge that rounds the bowl offers a subdued element of structure to this piece, and it naturally leads the eye to the rim, which displays an understated asymmetry in profile. Dressed in a rich contrast stain, the stummel here is awash with stunning grain, especially at the fore, where the bowl's panel defines a vast area swirling with birdseye vortices in dense clusters.