Kurt Balleby: Smooth Acorn with Antler Tobacco Pipe

The Acorn isn't a rare or non-traditional shape by any means, yet it's not one we see often from Kurt Balleby, especially compared to his bent Brandy and Bulldog renditions. That said, the Acorn is, essentially, an upside down Brandy — the bowl's widest section oriented at the rim rather than the base, yet both designs marked by a voluptuous roundness. While the Dublin shape also features this upward flare, the Acorn achieves it with a more curvaceous, organic style, catering well to the supple shaping cues of Danish pipe making, and well rendered here by Balleby.

The bowl of this piece is simultaneously soft and stout, the chamber surrounded by muscular insulating walls, yet they're devoid of hard lines, fitting sublimely in hand. Drawing focus to the bowl's substance, then, is a shank of decreased, oval cross section, curling gradually upward into the stem's slender recurve. It's one of Kurt's more diminutive pieces, offering a lightweight and balanced posture, without sacrificing on aesthetics: the stummel dressed in Balleby's gorgeous contrast stain for beautifully defined flame grain and birdseye, with the domed accent of antler at the shank end offering handsome contrast.