Yeti: Sandblasted Acorn (855) Tobacco Pipe

Micah Cryder is the artisan behind Yeti pipes, his passion for the craft imbued into him since childhood. An autodidact for much of his career, he turned to pipe makers forums for information about carving before he developed relationships with other notable American carvers who furthered his knowledge of the craft considerably, especially with regard to the technical elements. Over the years, his abilities have become even more refined, each pipe made contributing to his skills and solidifying his unique shaping style, something which can be seen here in this Acorn.

The Acorn is a shape which Micah has carved a number of times in the past, though with remarkably different outlines compared to this particular example, one which displays a decidedly Japanese-style aesthetic. There's an impressive amount of negative space present at the transitional area here, with the transition itself displaying a pinched look before expanding out as the shank reaches toward a thoroughly stylized shank end. Said shank is compressed into an ovoid shape before it takes on this striking flare, terminating in an asymmetrical, inward-sloping face that's ringed by a pair of ridges and tapers through the right flank to form a sharp point. This sculpted, teardrop-shaped structure affords the pipe a stunningly organic character, and it's paired here to what Micah describes as a "bloop" style saddle stem, with a bulbous, asymmetrical expansion at the base: its roundness further enhancing the organicism of the composition. At the fore, the bowl sits atop a pronounced, slightly spurred heel that descends below the transition, growing walls that expand dramatically as they rise to a broad, plateau-crowned rim. Below this rim, the bowl tapers slightly, creating the Acorn's iconic profile nicely, and softens the feel in hand. These extremely thick walls surround a broad, capacious chamber and offer ample space to showcase a stunning tanblast, one that reveals dense stacks of rippling ring grain cascading down its walls.