Martelo: Sandblasted Bent Billiard Tobacco Pipe

I look forward to the days when we receive pipes from Gustavo Cunha of Martelo, because they often cause me to be impressed, but there's also a fair likelihood of being dazzled. I imagine this particular composition as being proof of Cunha's courage. It takes a special block of briar to render grain like this, and to do it in a shape that requires so much cooperation of the briar is an exercise in futility, yet almost impossibly, here it is. It would have been relatively easy to compose a more subdued shape and not risk what briar inevitably does to pipe makers: it leaves them sobbing in a corner of the workshop after dashing their hopes for a truly superior pipe by revealing a fissure or a crack that opens and destroys the concept. There was enormous opportunity in this tall, swan-necked design for Cunha to be disappointed by nature. He won, as did we.

The bowl is an elongated Egg shape, its curvature finely maintained by the precise cheeking at the transition, from which extends the upward curling shank perfectly counterbalanced by the downturn of the tapered stem and together comprising a pronounced S-curve. A light, near-natural stain further proclaims the near pristine nature of the briar, and the growth rings stack upward and upward to the towering rim. Those rings also continue into the shank and mirror the curve found there for a thematic unity rarely seen. In hand, this pipe is sublime, nestling easily into the natural curve of the hand and invigorating the finger pads with with exhilarating texture that never seems to end. It's a spectacular rendering. I'm dumbstruck.