Grechukhin: Smooth Long Shank Blowfish (G) Tobacco Pipe

Though we've carried Grechukhin's work since 2011, it wasn't until last year that I really began to fully appreciate what Vladimir can do with a block of briar, a rod of vulcanite, and an idea. The change began with a single pipe, the first of these more complex long-shanked Blowfish that I personally described. It ended up being a long description, and an even longer one to write, because I kept picking up the pipe just to turn it around and around to look at it from every angle I could think of. No matter how strange a viewpoint I came up with, the shape still worked, still looked balanced, even as tricks of the design's angles, orientations, and proportions sometimes drastically altered what kind of shape it appeared to be.

This Blowfish by Vladimir is not quite so dramatic in those shifts, as viewed from angle to angle, but still as deft in expressing balance and beauty whether I've turned it simply in left-side profile, or, say, at a one-quarter frontal view towards the right side of bowl, lifted 15 degrees upwards and rolled about 45 degrees to either right or left. This is not something easy to describe. It is really the sort of thing you have to try yourself to figure out, and fully appreciate.

- Eric N. Squires