Brown Sandblasted Bent Billiard 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."

True to form, this bent Billiard from Cavicchi simultaneously displays excellent flame grain and growth rings thanks to the sandblast, which also gives the stummel a dual coloring of a bright, pale walnut hue and light mahogany. The walls of the bowl are quite straight for a bent Billiard and only lightly sloped, and out back the shank is round and muscular in its reach back to the bent saddle stem of black acrylic. The color and profile Cavicchi afforded to this piece are both remarkable, but the grain is nothing short of mesmerizing, a great tribute to the Italian artisan's abilities.