German Estates: Axel Reichert Smooth Shield with Amboyna Burl Tobacco Pipe

The Shield is an artisan pipe shape that favors breadth over depth, with the bowl evoking its namesake through a broad fore and circular demeanor. It affords pipe makers a wealth of creative liberties, and some display more forward-urging bowls wrapped by ridgelines, while others are more upright and stoic, like this piece from Germany's Axel Reichert. Instead of a single ridgeline defining the bowl's outer shape, Reichert has wrapped the middle with a crisp panel; it calls to mind the iconic characteristic of the Elephant's Foot design but with a circular aspect compared to that shape's more conical, Pickaxe-like configuration. Here, Reichert has shaped the pipe to maximize the briar's natural grain, with cross grain covering the flanking panel and birdseye populating the shield's fore, all highlighted in an auburn stain and contrasted by the shank's long extension of multi-hued amboyna burl.