Davide Iafisco: Smooth Bent Dublin Tobacco Pipe

Davide Iafisco boasts a unique shaping style, one which makes itself known in every pipe that he crafts, something influenced by the Italian artisan's wide-ranging stylistic influences and his own singular approach to design. Among these influences are Claudio Cavicchi, Teddy Knudsen, Todd Johnson, Chris Asteriou, and Adam Davidson, attending Adam and Jeff Gracik's pipe-making seminar in 2015. Iafisco's first inspirations came by way of the classic Anglo-French school of design, though he quickly branched out, and using these artisans as benchmarks and guides for his own work, developed a sharp eye for drilling, and a keen sense of line that saw him start work for Luciano as one of their principle carvers. Now Iafisco makes pipes under his own name, leveraging his more than a decade's worth of experience to bring us expertly executed pieces such as this bent Dublin.

Many of Iafisco's works draw on the Italian school of design for inspiration, with a fair few of his Dublins being rendered in the neoclassical tradition, though this one strikes me as being especially so, with unashamedly bowl-centric proportions that place great emphasis on the fore. Said bowl spreads out to a striking breadth and presents with a vast rim that's dipped at the middle, the flare of its walls coming to a firm ridge before tapering slightly and meeting another ridge that denotes the rim itself, lending a touch of firmness up front and higher up. Additionally, the bowl is where the majority of the asymmetry of this piece lies, with the bowl's build favoring the left side and seemingly turned that way as well, lending the composition plenty of subtle details to appreciate. A unique style of heel supports the bowl, lifting near the fore before dipping into a point as it reaches the wall, with the shaping here courtesy of the shank. This shank does well to balance the visual weight of the bowl, not only due to its gentle flare to the end which is continued by the stem base, but because it's paneled, with the flanks being flat while the top and underside are rounded. This creates a striking combination of textures that that keeps the hand occupied outside of the bowl. A vibrant chestnut contrast stain dresses the briar here, revealing wrapping flame through the flanks and around the bowl while the top and underside are covered in birdseye, something that's especially prevalent at the rim.