Smooth Jatobá with Mammoth Tobacco Pipe

Gustavo Cunha of marTelo grew up in the municipality of Diamantina in southeastern Brazil, where he grew to love working with wood. After obtaining a degree in design and working with a manufacturer of modernist furniture, he began to make Freehand briar pipes that took inspiration from classic English shapes. He met with Tom Eltang to learn from the Danish master in 2013 and began making pipes full-time the following year. His workshop is located in Belo Horizonte, a large city in the same state of Minas Gerais where he grew up.

The title of Cunha's Jatobá shape is a reference to the tubular fruit of the courbaril tree native to Central and South America. Fittingly, the bowl is incredibly deep at over two inches — a depth just shy of measuring up to half of the piece's almost five inches in length. The grain is beautifully straight and tall on the bowl of this piece, all of it finished smoothly for easy appreciation with the eyes and fingertips alike. The beadline that marks the start of the bowl's taper toward the rim gives it the appearance of a tall, rounded Bulldog bowl, which is helped by the presence of a diamond-shaped shank out back. The shank backs up to an accent of mammoth ahead of the saddle-style vulcanite stem. The shaping of the bowl and title of the piece are a great nod to Cunha's admiration of nature, and his eye for grain makes this pipe a particularly handsome one.