Ardor: Meteora Bent Apple Tobacco Pipe

The Ardor workshop was established in 1974, its name being a portmanteau of its founders, Angelo Rovera and his son Dorelio Rovera. The family's tradition of pipe-making extends further, to 1911, when Angelo's father Francesco founded the Sociedade Rovera pipe company alongside his brothers. Even today, Ardor is carried on by Dorelio's sons Dimitri and Damiano. This bent Apple from Ardor thoroughly illustrates the marque's style, possessing a plump, hearty bowl formed by thick walls rounding from the firm heel toward the rim, creating a robust, palm-filling figure. Lifting from the transition, a broad oval shank subtly arcs toward a gently downturned saddle stem of swirling green-and-turquoise acrylic. The stummel wears Ardor's Meteora finish, named after a rock formation in Greece upon which one of the largest complexes of Eastern Orthodox monasteries is built. Owing to its namesake, this finish boasts a wealth of textural variety as it dresses the surface with a rugged rustication set beneath a latticed arrangement of smooth, carved channels, granting an architectural quality, here stained with a warm, light hue.