Chris Asteriou: Sandblasted Cutty with Silver Army Mount Tobacco Pipe

In his formal and professional career, Chris Asteriou is an architect, that's what he went to school for, that's what he did for years before he became a professional pipe maker. To call him an architect now almost feels absurd, but it's doubtless that his 14 years of experience in that field have impacted his work as an artisan, as well as his degree in product design. Asteriou has a diverse portfolio that encompasses pipes of many influences, including classic English pieces, Danish Functionalist works, and even naturalistic, Japanese renditions of timeless profiles. This Cutty in particular strikes me as a fusion of the traditional with the contemporary, as the shape itself is one steeped in history, but Asteriou has modified it here with a much sleeker sense of line and a striking kind of forward cant that's not quite what you'd expect.

Rather than tilting forward sharply on its heel, the bowl here instead takes on a very faint forward lean, and its fore wall comprises a sweeping curve that meets a firm ridgeline which wraps around the high-set waist. The heel itself is rather sharp, pushing out prominently against its surroundings, and the combination of lines that surround both it and the bowl imbue said bowl with a powerful sense of forward momentum. In addition, the aerodynamic shaping of this pipe magnifies this momentum further, giving it the appearance that it could easily cut through the air as it rushes toward its destination. The transition is wide and sees the start of the tapering shank, meeting a broad, slanted fitment of silver at its end that's domed to accept the push-style stem. This stem is a sleek saddle of pale, grey-green vulcanite whose expansion ring is slanted to follow the line of the silver adorning the shank, cementing the intentional, concise design of this beautiful pipe. Dressing the stummel is a dark, inky sandblast that unveils stacks of rippling ring grain that cascade down the bowl, its hues sharply contrasted by both the stem and the silver mount.