Smooth Volcano Tobacco Pipe

One seriously tight-knit take on the Volcano shape, in this piece Scott's taken all the subtle asymmetry and dynamic linework you'll find on larger Japanese iterations and condensed it all into less than five inches from fore to bit. Taking a closer look, he's done some interesting things with the teardrop shank here as well, keeping the line quite crisp and defined as it cascades down the left side of the shank and into a circumnavigating ridge, which curves around the bowl to the transition along the opposite face. What's more, the asymmetry is quite slight, nearly indiscernible from the smoker's perspective; viewed head on, however, you'll notice the bowl seems to tilt slightly to the left, a neat illusion created by Scott having shaped the pronounced, rounded base slightly off-center, subtly bulging out to the right. Countering the left-ward tilting bowl with the right-ward ebbing base creates a nice sense of balance overall, which in turn keeps things from becoming too busy or overwhelming once compounded with its abbreviated length. Really cool piece from Scott here.

- Andrew Wike