Abe Herbaugh: Peewit Two Pipe Set with Horn and Bamboo Tobacco Pipe

Sixten Ivarsson is widely considered the grandfather of today's artisan pipe making movement, and his influence is seen in the techniques, shapes, and approaches to design of carvers now. For this year's American Pipe Making Exposition and its "Influence" theme, Abe Herbaugh presents a two-pipe set of Sixten's famed Peewit shape — essentially a slender, Danish-style take on the Acorn.

Both of Herbaugh's versions exude the sleek, streamlined postures of Sixten's originals, and Abe has done well to match their proportions, even matching in the slight asymmetry of the bowl shape (a dose of Abe's personal style amid the overarching influence of Sixten). The two are differentiated primarily by finish and accenting materials with one smooth and accented with horn, the other sandblasted with bamboo. These accents further pay homage to Sixten's influence on Abe and the modern artisan movement; Ivarsson was one of the first to consider accenting materials as part of the pipe's overall artistic composition, rather than only as functional aspects that either saved on briar, or provided a military mount, or some other purely practical function. Rather, Sixten approached accenting materials as elements of design, as well as function.

Abe honors that influence with accents of bamboo and horn in these two Peewits. The use of bamboo with the sandblasted piece maintains the form's sleek lines, and the rhythm of the knuckles aligns with the spacing of the stem base. The smooth piece, then, features a horn mount, bulging slightly toward the stem in a nod to Ivarsson's style. Herbaugh has been taken by this use of bulbous, rounded accent work for several years now, playing with proportions and curves in his own work — sometimes to dramatic, exaggerated effect — but in this composition he returns to that original rendering from Ivarsson that first caught his artistic eye.