Smooth Cherrywood (CCCC) 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."

This Cherrywood is fronted by the traditional forward-canted bowl — in this case far more canted at the aft than the fore — with shallow plateau on the heel, which is still relatively flat enough to allow this piece to sit without the aid of a stand. As usual with Cavicchi's work, the grain is striking: tall, leaning flame grain splashed across the walls of the bowl and highlighted with a smooth finish and honey-blonde stain. A wide accent ring of spalted wood backs up the brief, upturned shank and holds a tapered, bent stem of black acrylic. The intriguing lines of the bowl, with its lightly sloped rim and gentle cant at the fore wall, helps to give this piece a fascinating profile, but Cavicchi has also undone himself as usual with the great grain that he coaxed out of the briar.