Il Duca: Sandblasted Bent Apple with Boxwood (B) Tobacco Pipe

Max Rimensi, the artisan behind Il Duca, is a versatile pipe maker that moves through different schools of design with ease, fashioning anything from highly organic, Danish-inspired pieces to more traditional shape-chart standards. He spends a great deal of time sketching out his designs and thinking about the craft of pipe making, and this intense passion and attention to detail can be felt in all of his work. The carver tends to take classic shapes and modernize them through his own creative lens, as evident by this bent Apple.

While just a touch over four and a half inches in length, this piece is quite stocky in terms of proportions, with a stout, heavy-set bowl and a thick, upturned shank. The rounded features of the bowl are subtly contrasted by the triangular shank, which broadens rapidly as it exits the transition and meets the slender stem out back. The gentle curvature through the shank offers an easy-flowing sense of line to the composition, aided in part by the consistent undercurve of the stummel. This piece comes dressed in a crisp sandblast treated to one of Rimensi's vibrant auburn contrast stains, defining flame grain in black streaks across ripples of growth rings while the underside is dimpled with a vast peppering of birdseye. An accent of warm boxwood adorns the shank end and adds some subtle contrast to the fiery hues of the stummel behind it.