Smooth Elephant's Foot with Boxwood (Gold) Tobacco Pipe

Peter Heding makes some seriously cool Elephant's Foot shapes. Lots of Danish pipe makers work with this shape from time to time--Tom Eltang and Teddy Knudsen principally come to mind--and Peter's version stacks right up there. Lithe, elegant, possessing all of the right lines and curves and angles, the piece works harmoniously and coherently, something that is rather hard to do with a shape as complex as this one. The grain is superb, with excellent cross grain running from the back of the bowl to the front, terminating into a large field of good birdseye on that massive front panel. The breaks between birdseye and straight grain could not have been more perfectly executed, with no bleed of straight grain at all onto that front panel. Beautiful work!

-- Sykes Wilford