Japanese Estates: Tsuge Ikebana Smooth Tomato (Fukuda) (K) (184) (2017) Tobacco Pipe

The three artisans who staff Tsuge's Ikebana workshop are the best carvers the brand employs, leveraging their considerable skill to create sophisticated works that often draw from the Danish style of pipe design. Kazuhiro Fukuda, who made this Tomato, was actually sent to Denmark by Tsuge in the 1970s to learn directly from master artisan Sixten Ivarsson, an experience that would come to inform the next half a century of his career. Fukuda's work displays an overtly Danish style, with a focus on soft lines and rich curvature, both of which are seen here throughout this pipe's outline. The transition is wide, and it pairs a robust, supple bowl to a subtly lifted shank and stem, offering a balanced composition without detracting from the presence of any of this pipe's parts. The shank itself is a compressed, ovoid stretch of briar that expands as it curls up, flaring gently before erupting into a pronounced panel that rounds the shank end and defines the domed area of its face. This domed face boasts a recessed mortise, where both the tenon and stem base can nestle in, creating a contiguous, unbroken look while simultaneously introducing an intriguing area of negative space thanks to the stem's expansion ring. Up front, the bowl stands on a sweeping heel, its walls expanding to a mid-set waistline and presenting a wealth of fluid curves to appreciate while smoking as they take on an arcing taper to the gently chamfered rim. Substantive in hand and lacking for nothing in terms of soft contours, this pipe is dressed in a warm, mahogany-hued stain that unveils dense flame grain around the bowl and through the shank, with the expansive underside of this piece displaying an ocean of birdseye.