Danish Estates: Kent Rasmussen Smooth Horn (Three Star) Tobacco Pipe

Kent Rasmussen has been working with wood since he was a child and grew up creating art, something he's been passionate about ever since, so much so that, in 1988, he began a career as a modern artist. In 1994 he carved his first pipe, more an experiment than anything else, a hobby, though, in 1998, after losing interest with the realm of modern art, he began carving pipes again, and, in 1999, he met Teddy Knudsen, a man who showed him that pipes themselves could be art. Armed with the knowledge that he could combine his passion with his work, he redoubled his efforts yet again, making artisan carving his new occupation and creating pieces such as this singular Horn rendition.

It's seldom that we see Horns such as this from Kent Rasmussen, with most of his iterations of the shape conforming to more classic outlines, but he certainly has a talent for rendering them. It's kind of shocking, actually, just how well this piece retains the compositional flow of the more classic Horns, as the shank follows a familiar upturn whose arc continues through most of the stem's bit before curving back down to the button. Of course, this piece diverges from those profiles at this point as well, the shank being short and meeting the stem at a flare to the face into which the extended tenon fits through a push-style mount reinforced with a trim brass ring. This setup offers a great deal of visual separation between the stem and the stummel, though the two are stylistically linked through matching flares, one at the shank end and one at the stem base.

The stummel is rounded by a single wrapping ridgeline from the shank to just below the rim, with this ridge draping over the top of the stummel and favoring the left flank. Though it adds some firmness to the piece, it also enhances the outline's expansion toward the rim and easy curvature underneath, said expansion resulting in a blooming rim whose build is similar to that of the shank end. Dressing the briar here is a warm auburn stain that reveals flame grain following the curves of the stummel's flanks and running all the way to the rim, with every surface not striated by flame awash with dense birdseye.