Sandblasted Pear with Boxwood Tobacco Pipe

Normally when we see something overtly floral-organic from Alex Florov, it is of a lush style, suggesting a nod to the Art Nouveau movement he's expressed an appreciation for. Every once in a while, however, we see something like this, which I'll call "soft-organic" — organic, yet minimalist, suggestive the floral, but without leafs or planes or panels, or any other suggestive shaping that would bring with it a significant dose of edges or acute angles of line.

This Pear (and the smooth Tomato appearing in the same update with it) represent a rarer Florov style. Frankly when Shane first showed them to me they caught me off guard. Part of that was because they were sitting right next to each other — two pipes with an approach I've only seldom seen from Alex — and part of that because they weren't that long-shanked. As far as Florov pipes from the past go, I can only recall this kind of shaping in a few of his really long briars.

- Eric N. Squires