Smooth Reclining Mesa with Mastodon Ivory Tobacco Pipe

While it's always a pleasure to handle the work of established industry legends there is an equal, if different, pleasure in handling the work of newer carvers. Watching these "young lions" and their progress through shapes, themes and the struggle to find a voice that is uniquely theirs is something I would not miss for the entire world. Once in a while, when the stars are right, I am here when a pipe arrives from a newer talent that announces his arrival as a force in the business. A pipe that is the "total package" of craftsmanship and visionary shaping that is his and his alone. I have liked Jeff, both as an artist and a person for a while now, and when I first laid eyes on this Mesa, emotionally it felt like a golfer I had money on just drained a 40 foot putt to win the Masters.

On first blush the composition reminded me a bit of a "katana", a pipe that, to my mind, found its ultimate expression with Rolando Negoita. That impression quickly evaporated when I saw the sheer degree of compositional and conceptual layering the pipe possessed. The long, curved plane that the bowl rests upon represents the desert floor, and the bowl is the extinct volcano that makes up geological mesas. "Rests" is actually a poor word, for the mesa's entire base is the desert, there is no pinching of the form between the two visual elements. The volcano has three distinct layers, and the top oblique view leaves one with a sense of gravitational compression and wind erosion. On another plane, the desert base is fashioned in a highly stylized manner, following an almost Tokutomi-esque katachi form. The pairing of this base and bowl is inspired. The muscular wildness of the bowl ("Yang", if you will) is tamed by the Yin of the deftly executed, restrained base. The intensely defined birdseye of the top and bottom of the base makes for wonderful desert sand and the razor tight straight grain visually increases the height of the stark, geographical wonder that the bowl represents. Bravo, Jeff!

--Bear Graves