Smooth Horn (Snail) Tobacco Pipe

Denmark is home to some of the greatest carvers that have ever contemplated a piece of briar and a land that many collectors immediately think of when it comes to the horn shape. Tom is Danish (and we know this for a fact, because Sykes has been to his house!) but the horn is well down the list as far as his most frequently executed shapes go. Moreover, when Tom Elects to create a horn, each iteration has such distance from his previous one that "typical Eltang approach to the horn shape" is one phrase that I am confident that I will never be able to use.

With this elegant Snail Grade horn, Tom eschews the subtle organicism and asymmetry that we have seen in some of his horns of the past and the lines of the overarching composition feature an exquisite flow, grace and a sense of style that is all too rare in many horns. The dome of the rim is less pronounced than most, with just enough subtle bulge to turn the view from the lateral oblique into the extraordinary, and features something of a cool "sleight-of-hand". While the entry into the tobacco chamber is a perfect circle, the cant of the lip and the flow of the rim's cross grain creates an impression that the chamber is a muted ellipsis. The arc of the bowl is unabashedly vertical (this is one horn whose rim will always be seen from the smoker's vantage) and is well complemented by the playful return arc of the tail. Then we have the grain. Well, it is a Snail Grade.

--Bear Graves