Yeti Smooth Blowfish with Bakelite (350) (Unsmoked) Tobacco Pipe

Micah Cryder of Yeti Pipes is an incredibly talented artisan, one of my favorites in fact, as he injects each of his pipes with a degree of whimsy and jocularity that reflects his own palpable passion for the craft, all while imbuing them with reverence toward his inspirations. This Blowfish is truly a stunning piece, and it's one that immediately calls to mind the Japanese school of pipe design thanks to its impressively developed asymmetry and its subtle fluidity. I'm immediately reminded of the work of Hiroyuki Tokutomi here, not due to its closeness to any particular piece, but in the way that the Japanese master's own Blowfish often feature incredibly baroque, complex ridgelines that frame the entirety of the composition and often feed into each other: creating an extremely varied array of seemingly infinitely looping lines that feature no real start or end point. Here, that style of rendering ridges is phenomenally achieved, with the added embellishment of an extremely pronounced arc through the bowl, especially when viewed from the fore.

The shank here is crafted in an asymmetric hexagon and curls upward out of a tight transition, taking on a subtle flare as it reaches to the stem. The ridges lining the shank flow into the stem at the junction, with the stem's base continuing the shank's flare and featuring a trim accent band of vibrant green Bakelite: the world's first commercially available synthetic plastic and a material that's become prized in recent years for its vibrant tones and high heat resistance. The edge of the stem base, right before it dips into the saddle's shoulders, acts as a convergence point for all of the ridges running across the shank, its edges sharp as it assumes an angular stance that lends the composition an active momentum. Up front, the bowl's shape emerges as impressively plump, at least on the right side, where one of the shank's ridges rises sharply at the transition and curls over the aft wall of the bowl, defining the shape's iconic paneled area on that side, yet the proper surface of the wall is absent any edge: pushing out and rounding significantly until its softness is interrupted by a kiss of plateau. The left side, however, appears more archetypally "Blowfish," as the many wrapping ridges define an outer panel and an inner panel, with the space in between making a swift taper into the inner panel. At the lower center of this arrangement, the bowl is deeply indented, and the shape of the panels takes on their own kind of arc, one that moves in the same direction as the right side's bulge, as if the briar were pushed by a preternatural thumb and smoothly pressed into shape. The effect of this particular shaping is enormous, and any first impressions given by this pipe are immediately made secondary by the sudden realization of this composition's stunning organicism, something that Cryder has here made appear effortless. Dressing this piece is a warm, rich, maple-toned stain that unveils dense cross grain wrapping the exterior panel of the left side and both the top and bottom of the shank, while either flank of the stummel are awash with swirling vortices of birdseye.