Smooth Acorn (Gold) Tobacco Pipe

Peter Heding has a couple of shapes that share some commonality with this long shanked acorn. One is his long shanked saucer, the other is his venerable "Ivarsson". To Peter's great credit, with each of these different pipes he is, in no way, just knocking off one of his own established pipe shapes, or simply tweaking something he has done before and calling it something else. The acorn bowl of the Ivarrson features an entirely different compositional proportion to its shank, and that shank, faithful to its inspiration, shows great restraint and subtly to its flare. The Saucer shares a shape with this acorn from heel to 20% below the rim, but the former has a wicked edge to delineate the rim and a far more rapid flattening on top (it is a saucer, after all).

Peter Heding has that cool ability to create shapes that have no exact analog out there (heck to even come close to an analog for this shape I would have to reach back across the pond and tap Rolando Negoita) and yet leave you with an impression of the intuitive, the familiar. I find this pipe to be no exception and I am positively enchanted with how the three principle elements of this briar can grab the eye as individuals, and yet maintain such an impeccable continuity and liquidity throughout its entirety.

--Bear Graves