Brown Smooth Bent Pot 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."

As to be expected from Cavicchi, the grain of this bent Pot is dazzling. Straight grain drapes the bowl from heel to rim, all of it finished smoothly with a chestnut-hued stain, while swirling birdseye adorns the heel, the rim of the bowl, and top and bottom of the shank. The walls of the squat bowl are lightly tapered, almost giving the appearance of a short Brandy bowl. The straight grain reaches back to the sides of the gently upturned round shank, which quickly fades into a lengthy, tapered stem of black acrylic that bends lightly in its reach back to the bit. Handsome in profile and even more handsome in the orientation of its grain, this is yet another great work that displays Cavicchi's ability to read a briar block.