Sandblasted Cobra with Fossilized Whale Spine Tobacco Pipe

Jason Mouton has spent almost his entire life in Gueydan, Louisiana, known as the "Duck Capital of America" since 1977. He grew up hunting ducks with his father and as a teenager began learning how to make duck calls, an experience that would give him plenty of time working with lathes before he started making pipes as an adult. Jason made his first pipe in 2018, giving it away as a gift. He sold his second pipe, kept his third for himself, and since then has made a fine name for himself as an artisan pipe maker.

At the fore of Jason's interpretation of Bo Nordh's Cobra shape stands a bowl with an Egg-like profile from the side but a pair of ridgelines on the flanks that give it a lenticular appearance from above. The bowl is sandblasted and darkly stained (except on the smooth rim), as is the shank, which is arch-shaped on its upward sweep back to the accent. Jason made a most unusual choice for this accent: fossilized whale spine. The vulcanite stem is inlaid directly into the accent, and stretches back in a saddle-shaped, lightly bent orientation. It's a piece that, true to Jason's geographic origin, is full of naturalism and mystique.