Danish Estates: Tao Smooth Billiard with Horn Tobacco Pipe

Jens "Tao" Nielsen spent most of his early life at sea, but after meeting his wife, he returned to shore and started his pipe-making journey. He learned how to craft pipes in Erik Nording's workshop, where he met Poul Ilsted. Ilsted and Nielsen eventually left and founded the Svendborg brand. They worked together for 11 years before closing the workshop to focus on their personal artisanal careers. Nielsen is mostly known for his compact, muscular shaping style, which is on full display with this stocky Billiard.

While this piece is a bit longer than we normally see from Nielsen, measuring just a bit over five inches from end to end, it's incredibly tight-knit and boasts a rather brawny build. The tall, full-bodied bowl stands proudly at the fore of the composition, and it houses a deep chamber within its thick insulating walls. The bowl naturally fills the hand with substance, while the arrow-straight shank-and-stem arrangement that stretches out back provides a nice sense of balance. The thick, rounded shank continues the heartiness of the bowl before giving way to a creamy accent of horn. The horn accent provides a touch of warmth to the pipe's color palette before introducing a slender mouthpiece of jet-black vulcanite. A smoky, auburn-hued smooth finish dresses the stummel and highlights dense constellations of birdseye on either flank of the bowl, providing plenty of visual detail to admire.