AKB Meerschaum: Carved Skull Tobacco Pipe

We've often seen skulls as a motif in meerschaum pipes and this is no surprise, as it's an old, storied theme that's been around since the 1800s. Not only this, but it's a striking one at that, reminding us of our mortality or satiating a morbid curiosity or just looking really interesting. This particular example from AKB is a highly stylized imagining of the human cranium, with strikingly extended alveolar processes that push the top teeth down quite a bit and no lower mandible. The carving is quite detailed, as we've come to expect from the Turkish workshop, and its here paired to a demurely bent acrylic stem of swirling amber acrylic that will come to better match the pale white stummel as it patinates.