Tsuge Ikebana: Smooth Billiard with Bamboo (Fukuda) (M) (161) (2017) Tobacco Pipe

The Tsuge Ikebana workshop consists of three artisans — Kazuhiro Fukuda, Yoshirou Ohi, and Asami Kikuchi — who individually craft pipes under the Ikebana name. Fukuda is the workshop's supervisor, and he's been around since the inception of the workshop. In fact, he was one of the first artisans that Tsuge sent to Denmark to study under Sixten Ivarsson. With over forty years of experience in the craft, Fukuda is a master carver, and his elegant sense of design can be felt in all of his compositions, and this Billiard is no different.

Tall and stocky, the bowl of this piece stands proudly at the fore of an arrow-straight shank-and-stem arrangement, and it houses quite a generous chamber capacity within its thick, insulating walls. The low-set transition births an abbreviated shank that is extended by two knuckles of bamboo, and the warm organic material harmonizes well with the honey-blonde stain that dresses the stummel. After the bamboo, a saddle stem of jet-black vulcanite takes over and quickly reduces to a fine bit. The stummel wears a handsome smooth finish that highlights the tight bands of flame grain that streak across the flanks of the bowl to the birdseye-adorned rim. It's a bold, eye-catching bit of craftsmanship brilliantly rendered by one of pipe making's most venerated carvers, and it will no doubt make a welcome addition to a keen-eyed collector's rotation.