Davide Iafisco: Smooth Volcano Tobacco Pipe

Though we've received Volcanoes a few times previously from Davide Iafisco, this piece is perhaps the Italian carver's most ambitious and boldest rendition to date. It maintains the shape's characteristic tapering bowl, broad base, and firm, demarcating ridgeline encircling the base, but Davide has reinterpreted the form utilizing his own creative brilliance and has delivered a Volcano unrivaled in its intricacies and craftsmanship. It calls to mind some aspects of a Volcano we've seen from Davide before, but this example adds even more creative flourishes and highlights the Italian artisan's meticulous eye for detail and precise line work.

The concave rim is asymmetric in orientation, displaying a teardrop shape when viewed from the smoker's perspective and informs much of this design's shaping. A ridgeline emerges from the rim's left side, wraps around the bowl's backside, and takes a sharp downward turn before curling around the piece's entire underside. A subtler ridgeline runs parallel to that ridgeline, both lines eventually coming to a slight point. When this pipe is flipped over, those curling ridgelines along the base resemble the silhouette of a nautilus shell, making this design even more impressive. And when examined from a broader perspective, the briar's grain orientation undoubtedly informed the shaping of this pipe, Iafisco maximizing its potential while delivering a stunning piece in the process. Countless streaks of flame grain dance around the bowl's wide flanks — all that extra surface area being used brilliantly. The base's crisp ridgeline sets up for a fascinating sea of swirling birdseye along the entire underside. Davide finished the stummel in a light honey-blonde contrast stain, tastefully illuminating the striking grain, handsomely complemented by the warm tones of the cumberland mouthpiece.