Davide Iafisco: Smooth Blowfish Tobacco Pipe

Having studied under carvers like Teddy Knudsen and Claudio Cavicchi and attended the pipe-making seminars of Jeff Gracik and Adam Davidson, Italian artisan Davide Iafisco boasts quite a range of stylistic influences. Those influences can be felt in all of Iafisco's pipes, but the carver has an innate ability to transform and elevate his inspirations into something entirely unique. Before carving pipes, he worked with wood for a long time as a furniture designer, and his previous line of work aptly prepared him for the precise balancing of aesthetics with functionality required for pipe making. Here, Iafisco presents his handsome rendition of the novel Blowfish shape.

Iafisco perfectly encapsulates the organic, asymmetrical shaping that makes the Blowfish such a distinctive shape. He brilliantly renders the shape's sweeping ridgeline that travels across the underside of the shank, up the fore of the bowl, and back around the flank to the transition. A second ridgeline wraps around the other flank of the bowl and accentuates the bulging, disk-like panel found there, while the shank curls gently out back and broadens gradually into the cumberland saddle stem. The entire shape, from fore to bit, possesses an elegant curvature that the pronounced lines accentuate, giving the eye plenty of focal points from which to take in the pipe's brilliant form. The stummel wears a smoky smooth finish that showcases dense swathes of birdseye on either flank of the pipe and steady cross grain across the top of the bowl and shank.