Konstantin Shekita: Lattice Bent Apple Tobacco Pipe

Konstantin's Lattice pipes are certainly strange, in the very simple sense that they are very far from your usual pipe. Yet while the results are very unusual, the effort behind one of these strikes me as even more unusual.

Consider this: Konstantin could make a smooth pipe, and if he thought it turned out very well he could then place a special stamp on it, carrying a special price. If it turned out well, but not exceptional, he'd still have a finished pipe to sell. What started out as a smooth pipe could also fall back to being a sandblast, if a minor flaw appeared but the ring grain underneath was right. And in every case, he could be, say, 90% done with the pipe, hit a snag, but with some tweaking of the shape still produce a different pipe.

I don't see any contingencies being possible with one of these Lattice pieces. Starting out, Konstantin is choosing to invest a lot of time in one of these — all that under-cutting and creating delicate bridges of briar. Then if something goes wrong, I should think the pipe is done, as in, kaput. If while approaching the finish-line, a tool snags or his focus wavers, and one of the bridges of the lattice-work is snapped, what's the fall-back? The form is set, tons of material underneath the surface has been removed, everything needs to go as planned; there's no reshaping or trying another finish here. These are, really, all-or-nothing pipes.