American Estates: Alex Florov Smooth Horn (Slonim) (2012) Tobacco Pipe

Alex Florov's shaping style centers around remarkably complex compositions that include a truly incredible amount of painstaking detail, the American artisan's work primarily taking inspiration from the Japanese school of pipe making. It's very seldom that we see takes on the Horn from Florov, though his renditions of the shape speak to a remarkably sculptural outlook on its design that immediately calls to mind similarly evocative visions of the form from the likes of Kent Rasmussen and Hiroyuki Tokutomi. Remarkably organic in silhouette, this pipe is defined by a series of baroque ridges that frame its stummel, working with the shape's iconic fluidity and consistent expansion to naturally draw the eye to the fore and afford this piece a firm muscularity in hand. The transition is wide and curvaceous, giving way to a curling shank that tapers and lifts before flaring out subtly toward its end, where it's capped with a trim band of black vulcanite. This slim ring acts as the junction to a matching saddle stem, one whose base extends the shank's flare, especially at the top: where a ridge rounds the peak of this flare and flows through the top flanks of the shank. These ridges continue through the aft wall of the bowl and round out similarly to the stem before meeting to form a continuous edge that highlights the wide expanse of the transition and emphasizes curves throughout the top of the shank and back of the bowl. Two more ridges line the lower flanks of the shank and similarly sweep forward, highlighting the fore wall of the bowl and coming to rest at the rim before splitting and outlining said rim's undulating form. At the underside, the far edges of these lower ridges frame a pair of hollow-carved channels that cinch and push out near the midsection to form another brace of ridges, ridges that flank a thin, lengthy panel that runs from the base of the stem to the very fore of the rim. At the rim, these panels create a rectangular outcropping that acts as its highest point, while its entire surface area outside of the rim is covered in smooth-sanded plateau: complete with visible crags between clusters of birdseye. It wasn't enough for Florov to create this trim strip of smooth plateau across the briar, no, he's actually extended it into the base of the stem, having carved the vulcanite to match the plateau and magnify the organic aesthetic of the composition. Finished in a warm, smooth stain, the stummel showcases wrapping flame grain through the flanks, with cross grain and birdseye displayed at the rim.