Ping Zhan: Smooth Acorn with Bamboo and Boxwood Tobacco Pipe

A favorite shape of Ping Zhan's, this style of Acorn draws influence from Sixten Ivarsson's signature rendition of the design. While the underlying Sixten form is evident in Ping's iterations, the Chinese carver incorporates a more stylized, organic motif à la Hiroyuki Tokutomi, the Japanese master having rendered his own interpretations of Ivarsson's.

Ping often pairs his signature bamboo-carved horn to this shape, but here in this example, Zhan utilizes four knuckles of genuine bamboo. Ironically, the use of the actual material is quite striking when given the context of his oft-seen horn-accented iterations. With a slight upward curve, the bamboo combines with the stem for a sinuous silhouette, the bowl perched on the end. The tucked transition lends more poise and attention to the bowl's high-set waistline, while the grain follows the shaping beautifully. Accented with boxwood at the shank face, emulating the look of a fifth bamboo knuckle, the color palette maintains a bright, natural hue, the only dark tones coming from the vulcanite stem, which curves slight right-ward to offset the bamboo's bend.