American Estates: Adam Davidson Smooth Bent Billiard (2013) Tobacco Pipe

While many of Adam Davidson's Billiard renditions skew towards a more trim, reserved American interpretation of Danish design cues, this bent iteration is a quite voluptuously beautiful design. Still well within the American artisan's portfolio, it yet boasts a bowl height of almost two-and-half inches and a length of six, offering both an abundance of chamber capacity and a comforting in-hand presence.

Both in profile and when viewed from above, it appears to have a rounded shank, but Adam has cleverly made it both oval and canted to the right, more perfectly following the briar's grain and creating a quite comfortable angle for thumb draping, especially when I hold it with my left hand. It's the kind of bespoke shaping I expect from a master artisan, and a delightful appreciation of the briar's natural beauty, giving rise to dense striations of straight grain all around the bowl and up the sides of the shank, with mesmerizing birdseye packing the chamfered rim and curvaceous underside.

Davidson has made the grain permanently unmissable with a glossy smooth finish and brilliant auburn and black contrast stain, making the finish as much a work of art as his precise shaping. It's topped by a particularly lithe example of Adam's excellent hand-shaped and funneled saddle stems, slightly bent to ensure this pipe smokes with comfort and efficiency to match its superlative appearance.