Smooth Freehand with Mastodon Ivory (Two Stars) Tobacco Pipe

As planes, angles, edges and surfaces intertwine, visualized and realized as only Kent Rasmussen can, they create this strikingly, intricate, baroque-seeming horn. Kent, with the deftness we've come to expect of him, creates the entire composition, as complex as it seems, from just two planes, separated by exactly one edge, folded into each other. The sides, top of the shank and back of the bowl combine to create one field, while the underside of the bowl extends from the end of the shank, flipping over the front of the bowl to create the rim. The mastodon ivory cap at the end of the shank serves to ground the rest of the composition, as if the bowl grows forwards and upwards from it, like a flowing flower coming into bloom. Also note the way the the bottom flutes, narrowing at the center and extending, in almost equal proportions, at the end of the shank and front of the bowl.

The grain, as one would expect from Kent and as you can most clearly see below in the photos, is quite impressive, covering the sides in excellent flame grain, terminating into loose, intricate birdseye on the bottom of the bowl. That one edge demarcates the flame grain from the birdseye perfectly, falling cleanly on the edge between the two. Just extraordinary. But, would one expect any less of Kent?

-- Sykes Wilford