Smooth Bent Egg (Kikuchi) (026) (2026) Tobacco Pipe

The absolute zenith of Tsuge's work came out in their Ikebana line — "Ikebana" being Japanese for "living flowers" — made by just three expert artisans: Kazuhiro Fukuda, Asami Kikuchi, and Yoshirou Ohi. Fukuda served as supervisor and was sent to Denmark by Tsuge to study under pipe making legend Sixten Ivarsson. Kikuchi is now the line's sole carver, having crafted this bent Egg in 2026.

It's the lines that make this pipe special. Kikuchi has made a bent Egg that can appear deceptively flat in places but is always moving in arcs, whether it's the very light roundness of the shank and aft of the bowl or the lightly inflated rim. The grain is absolutely brilliant, with tall, almost perfectly straight flame grain dominating the bowl and topside of the shank and tight birdseye in a single, long sweep of the stummel's underside. The stummel is smoothly finished for an incredibly gentle touch to the palm and fingertips, and the bent saddle stem of vulcanite is somewhat brief while still being proportional to the rest of the piece. The Egg bowl itself is quite generous in the hand, a byproduct of this piece's considerable heft and Kikuchi's dynamic shaping. It's a subtly original work by Kikuchi, a way of taking a classic shape and making it her own with little more than great vision and imagination.