Sandblasted Bent Egg Tobacco Pipe

Few carvers can shift design styles with such ease and fluidity as Chris Asteriou. His portfolio is equally divided between artful, one-of-a-kind creations of stunning design and timeless classics that resemble pipes fashioned a century ago. Amidst this wide aesthetic breadth, though, every Asteriou pipe is united by paramount engineering and attention to detail that results in works of art founded on unmitigated craftsmanship and quality.

When Asteriou fashions a classic shape, he typically honors the shape charts and style of historic English marques. In this bent Egg, though, he draws on more Danish influence, focusing on minimalism and soft lines. The shank's undercurve provides the composition's foundation as it arches parabolically into the bowl's fore and into the stem's gentle recurve. The bowl reveals a plump roundness and a forward cant that continues the shank and stem's forward-urging momentum. Smooth, seamless, and soft lines define the piece apart from the stem's half-saddle step at the top, offering a hint of accenting sharpness to align with the rim's flattened nature and partial lip. All dressed in a dark sandblast, except for smooth briar along the rim and at the shank end, this Asteriou piece is a lesson in how beautiful simplicity can be when shaped harmoniously and with a masterful hand.