Doctor's: Smooth Billiard with Bamboo and Boxwood (Double Flash) Tobacco Pipe

Roman Kovalev, the clearly talented Russian carver behind Doctor's pipes, has rated this compact Billiard as Double Flash, meaning it's the second-highest tier that exists in his grading system. This tall, supple, gently rounded piece offers up some Danish influence through the bowl, its rounded heel and gentle upward taper inherent to that school's design style. Kovalev's signature use of bamboo is displayed, with each knuckle tightly spaced just so, the integration seamless and a contributor to this pipe's light weight. The artisan was among the first to bamboo sections of more eccentric, disuniform shaping, and this piece testifies to that signature with an extremely tight-knight array. In addition, Kovalev has covered the bamboo in boxwood, if one looks closely, a brilliant use of the hardwood that seals the bamboo's natural nodes. The proportional shaping and specificity of the bamboo continues through the expansion ring of the stem, the pale hues contrasted by the jet-black color. The bowl is wearing one of the carver's handsome honey blonde stains, revealing dense striations of flame grain on all flanks, his shaping so show off the grain quite masterful. Handsome whorls of birdseye dot both rim and the underside of the pipe, all of which culminates in a beautiful piece from a renowned pipe maker.