Smooth Sealion (Gold) Tobacco Pipe

Here we introduce for the first time from Peter Heding a shape the carver has christened the Sealion. Appropriately named, the composition borrows from another sea creature design, the Manta, along the posterior side of the bowl and in especial at the shank and shank terminus, particularly in its attitude and angle. It's a tantalizing shape, excellently fluid, exceptionally languid, of clean line, and of a cozy hand-feel. The pipe is also a fine canvas for a fetchingly good display of grain, a pattern here that derives from a burl at the rim on the face of the piece, and spindrifts back and out across the bowl in clear, diagonal charge.

-- Ted Swearingen