American Estates: Maigurs Knets Smooth Mushroom Poker with Bamboo and Amboyna Burl (Four Stars) (133) (Unsmoked) Tobacco Pipe

Maigurs Knets was born in Latvia and earned multiple art and design degrees before moving to the United States in 1990. His education and artistic penchant positioned him well to be an artisan pipe maker, and his portfolio is now replete with sculptural and inventive renditions such as this Mushroom Poker. Here we see the cylindrical, no-nonsense bowl of an upright Poker, wearing a domed rim of two-toned Amboyna Burl, the profile evocative of Calabash. I can't argue, it does indeed look like a mushroom. Knets has added four knuckles of pale bamboo to the design, an arrow-straight shank extension that extends the abbreviated shank neatly toward a downturned vulcanite saddle stem. The briar is dressed in a smooth auburn finish that does well to accentuate a handsome cross-grain orientation, and the entire composition has earned Knets' four star appellation.