Smooth Manta with Tail (Hiro) Tobacco Pipe

A short time back, my Harley boots clacking down our hardwood hallways, I spied a small lamp lit crowd in Sykess office, quiet, huddled around his desk. Hiroyuki Tokutomi had arrived and with him, his much anticipated "next" batch of pipes. Picking up this pipe, I (literally) held my breath. Toku-san was explaining the sheer amount of painstaking labor it took just in the fine sanding if the interior of the arcing tail. but I wasn't hearing most of it. My mind was locked on the single biggest aesthetic leap I have personally encountered in a pipe artisan, exemplified by this pipe and pipe # 002-141-0485.

This Hiro Grade Manta with tail is one of the largest pipes that Toku-san has created. Within the composition is an immaculate balance of Katachi (Japanese traditional arts and crafts)abstract representation, and hints at underlying chaos found within the eruption of plateau. This was also the first composition I held that spoke not of a form whose edges were going into the void, but a form appearing from out of the void. Face at desk level, I lifted my eyes to meet Toku-san's. A second later his eyes crinkled into a gentle smile. Yeah.. I got it.

--Bear Graves