Tsuishu is a material that's painfully labor intensive to concoct. So much so that the process of fabricating the stuff has all but become a lost art form. The lacquer is bonded strip by tiny strip and is eventually sawed in cross sections, creating a rainbow of threadlike hues. A collector could search through libraries of pipes for days at a time and never find this incredible material in use anywhere other than Satou's work. Add to beautiful and rare Tsuishu an incredibly fluid, gracile shape, blasted in a way to show off a stirring array of rippled ring grain, paired with Satou's masterful knack for precision engineering and right proper craftsmanship, and you're left with one helluva pipe, sir.
-- Ted Swearingen
