Smooth Micke Bent Billiard Tobacco Pipe

Yuwei Huang is a Taiwanese carver that draws inspiration from Danish and American pipe making traditions, leveraging his background in woodworking and pipe repair to impressive effect, and his work is often highly organic and quite gestural. This "Micke" bent Billiard pays homage Danish artisan Jørn Micke, regarded with Sixten Ivarsson and Bo Nordh as among the finest artisans of the Danish school (though Nordh was a Swede). As such, this piece proudly exhibits Huang's Danish influence, featuring a number of distinctly Danish design cues. The bowl proffers a typically Danish silhouette, placing a sleek, forward-angled rim atop walls that taper to a plump, exaggerated heel, concentrating the stummel's substance at the lower forward end of the design. Out back, a pinched transition gives way to a broad oval shank that flares wide at its domed junction to a comfortably bent saddle stem of brindled vulcanite, in true Danish fashion. Dressed in a rich auburn stain, the stummel boasts impeccable flame grain around the bowl, with dense swirls of birdseye across the broad heel.