Danish Estates: Peter Heding Smooth Pickaxe with Bamboo (Diamond) Tobacco Pipe

With leanings toward Bo Nordh's Elephant's Foot, this Pickaxe from Peter Heding displays the same curved and paneled bowl but in a much more slender, tapering profile. An absolutely stunning rendition, this piece testifies to the Danish carver's skill at both selecting briar and shaping it accordingly. Without cross grain streaking down the crisp panels or consistent, dense whorls of birdseye covering the fore and aft, the design would be all for naught. However, Heding has executed the grain orientation perfectly, highlighting it masterfully in one of his gorgeous, honey-blonde contrast stains. With a raised transition to create the shape's iconic, pointed heel in profile, the shank flares into the bowl while behind it extends three knuckles of pale bamboo, expertly married to the vulcanite stem whose base continues the rhythm of the bamboo. Such a stunning piece, from form to finish, couldn't be given anything other than Peter's highest grade: marked by a Zirconia diamond at the bottom of the shank.