Adam Davidson: Smooth Tomato with Sterling Silver Stem Tobacco Pipe

Sterling silver is one of Adam Davidson's favorite accenting materials. It's used to great effect on his signature Lorraine renditions as a striking army mount, but the American artisan also appreciates more trim, understated silver accents, often incorporating them into robust designs for a sense of svelte refinement. For our 2021 American Pipe Making Exposition, with the theme of accent stems, it made sense then that Davidson would turn to his favorite accenting material.

Instead of simply accenting the stem with silver, though, Adam fashioned this piece's entire mouthpiece from the precious metal — no small feat of craftsmanship and one that features the stem as the focal point. Describing the engineering process, Adam affirmed that the stem is actually sterling silver tubing that he meticulously shaped into a stem, with a subtle accenting bulge at the base, before fitting it with a stainless steel airway and filling the internal space with resin and vulcanite to ensure stability and heat resistance. To finish it, he crafted the button separately and, then, seamlessly soldered it to the rest of the stem. To his knowledge, a stem has never been made from sterling silver before, so he had to figure the process out entirely on his own through trial and error, aided by his years as a craftsman and his background in Industrial Design.

Though the stem of this pipe clearly catches the eye first and would be impressive paired to any shape, this stummel is a masterpiece in its own right as well. Adam appreciates retro Danish pipe designs, as well as the work of Japanese makers, and he's celebrated those styles in the shaping of the stummel. The bulbous Tomato bowl is plump and substantial and highly organic, being shaped according to the briar's grain for a subtle hints of asymmetry that lend the pipe an aesthetic of having been grown in nature rather than shaped by hand on a sanding disc. The shank, then, features a sudden flare at the end, with an askew face that's wrapped by a trim panel and kissed by plateau. Such a combination of rounded, asymmetrical bowl and flared, panel-wrapped shank end are design cues common across the work of Danish artisan Jørn Micke — whose work has inspired other Davidson designs — as well as that of Hiroyuki Tokutomi, who also draws inspiration from Micke.

With superlative grain and a waxed, but unstained finish, this pipe is the result of an immaculate block of briar shaped by hands skilled enough to realize its artistic potential. Combine such stunning shaping and grain with a stem of sterling silver, and this pipe might just be Adam Davidson's magnum opus.