Il Duca: Sandblasted Natural Tomato (B) Tobacco Pipe

Max Rimensi of Il Duca never fails to craft striking pipes, his personal style influenced by shaping schools from around the world and informed by his lively imagination and the thousands of pipes he studied on his way to becoming an artisan. The Tomato is a shape that Rimensi has crafted a fair few times, but each iteration strikes me as being unique and this particular example showcases a feature that we've not quite seen before in past renditions: a strikingly sleek length of shank and stem. This combination is truly arresting here, comprising a continuous taper from the transition to the button that catches the eye with its profoundly aerodynamic shaping and, while it places emphasis on the visual weight of the bowl, it still manages to maintain a good bit of attention without throwing the composition out of balance. The bowl here is plump, as a Tomato should be, and squat, with a dramatic flare to a high-set waist followed by an arcing taper to the rim: the entire build sat atop a firm, nearly pointed heel. The fore of this piece has a look reminiscent of the Acorn, and its perch at the end of the shank and stem lends it a thoroughly organic look that's only enhanced by the virgin finished sandblast that dresses the briar, revealing handsome grain and lending it the ability to patinate as it's smoked.