Smokingpipes.com Christmas Limited Edition Smooth Rhodesian with Horn (2008) (12/30) Tobacco Pipe

Excellent flame grain, contrasted beautifully by the vacuum-chamber staining technique used on most Sara Eltang smooth pipes, terminates into loose birdseye above the edge around the bowl. The subtly striated dark horn mount and tapered stem complete the composition.

As is the case with all of the Christmas series, the lovely horn ferrule features the Smokingpipes.com logo, '2008' and the number in the series (12/30 in this case) engraved in the horn.

So, a little background is probably in order:

Tom Eltang and I have talked about doing a Sara Eltang Christmas pipe specifically for Smokingpipes.com since mid-2005 when he first created the Sara Eltang line (actually, we might have discussed it even earlier than that when he was just thinking about creating the Sara Eltang line). So, while this is the first, it's a project that has been a long time in the making. But, we always timed these discussions poorly and it never ended up getting organized-- we'd chat about it when I visited in June promising to discuss shapes as we got closer, or we'd discuss it as Christmas approached when there was no way we could get everything necessary done in time. Well, during my last trip to Denmark, I had a free evening at the end of the trip and even though we'd spent a day together earlier in the trip, I ended up at Tom's workshop since it's where I end up, more often than not, if nothing else is scheduled. I'm not sure whether Tom brought the idea back up or I did, but it was perfect and the timing worked (late August-- enough time to work out shape and shank adornment details, for Tom to make them and for them to arrive in South Carolina well before Christmas). We discussed a bunch of shapes, some of which will hopefully be used for future Sara Eltang Smokingpipes.com Christmas series, but we settled on this rhodesian shape since it's a slight variation on one of the first, and possibly the most iconic, of the Sara Eltang shapes. Further, I think the addition of the horn ferrule complements the shape beautifully. Surprisingly quickly after we'd waded through all the details and made final determinations, examples showed up. We were positively giddy with excitement and I immediately wrote Tom to let him know that this is exactly what we wanted. Just two weeks later (Tom's no slouch in the hard-work department), the shipment of thirty arrived. Both Tom and I hope you like them as much as we do.

-- Sykes Wilford