Davide Iafisco: Sandblasted Acorn Tobacco Pipe

While Davide Iafisco takes inspiration from a wide variety of carvers, including Teddy Knudsen, Claudio Cavicchi, Jeff Gracik, and Adam Davidson, he elevates those influences through his distinctive approach to shaping, handsome finishing work, and keen sense of visual harmony. This Acorn is a fine example of his style, as it possesses the organic qualities found in Danish pipe making but rendered through Iafisco's creative prism. While the pipe is rather tight-knit, it maintains a strong sense of muscularity to its construction, especially around the broad, forward-canted bowl, which features the form's characteristic high-set waistline and inflated rim. The shank rapidly broadens across its curling length to a wide, disk-shaped face that mirrors the bulbous demeanor and implied momentum of the bowl, a shaping cue that imbues either end of the composition with a sense of dynamism. A crisp, dark sandblast dresses the stummel and coaxes out radiating waves of growth rings across the flanks of the bowl, save for the shank end and inner rim, which are left smooth and stained a ruby color to harmonize with the cumberland saddle stem.