Black Sandblasted Bent Dublin Tobacco Pipe

Claudio Cavicchi is not only a renowned pipe maker but also a renowned pipe smoker, having won the Committee International of Pipe Smokers Clubs' slow smoking world championship in 1993 by keeping three grams of tobacco lit for just over three hours and nine minutes. Cavicchi only took up pipe making full-time after a 30-year farming career, turning his first pipe when he decided to make his own Oom Paul rather than continuing to wait for delivery of one he already ordered. Cavicchi pipes are known for their superior grain, with former Pipes and tobaccos magazine editor Chuck Stanion remarking that their titular maker "can read briar as though it were a printed page."

Cavicchi found excellent grain to decorate this bent Dublin and coaxed it out with a fine sandblast that highlights the growth rings on both bowl and shank as they ripple across the flame grain. The bowl is widely conical but lacks the typical forward cant of a Dublin and features a wide, lightly inflated rim. A dark stain colors the stummel with occasional flecks of ruby-stained briar in between, and a gently bent saddle stem of black acrylic finishes the piece. The arrow-straight shank gives this piece a somewhat atypical profile for a bent Dublin, and the grain Cavicchi found to splash across the walls of the bowl sets it even further apart from the pack.