Smooth Apple with Bamboo and Mastodon Ivory Tobacco Pipe

This Tokutomi is a very light and handy little number, and all the more so thanks to how much chamber he packed into the pocket-pipe sized bowl. (Though, of course, he still kept a reassuring amount of thickness in the walls throughout, including shaping the chamber to follow the lower bowl's smooth taper.) The fairly stout two knuckles worth of pale bamboo he's used here (sandwiched between two pieces of mastodon ivory, as Tokutomi often does with bamboo) lends this modestly-sized beauty a sturdier look, though, like everything about this piece, it too feels light as a feather. The bowl itself is rendered in a smooth, organic style, very easy in hand, while sporting only a very subtle minimum of the balanced asymmetry Hiroyuki typically works in.

- Eric N. Squires