Tom Eltang: Smokingpipes.com 15th Anniversary Rusticated Devil Anse Tobacco Pipe

In 2012 Tom Eltang was watching Hatfields & McCoys when he got his first glimpse of it — the shape now commonly known simply as the Devil Anse. Immediately he went out to his workshop and knocked out his first prototype: the first step in the long process of developing the Eltang-Anse.

While Tom started out firm on the decision that an Anse should have an oval shank (as opposed to the circular shank of the original), there was still so much else that had to be adjusted and experimented with to get such a simple, clean form just right, perfected (degree of curve here, cant there; length of this, length of that). And since Tom was making so many of the things along the way anyway, his various iterations of the Devil Anse also wound up becoming a main testbed of the potential replacements for his signature Golden Contrast stain — the finish which he had unfortunately become allergic to a component of.

Perfect in its proportions, beautiful in its lines, and hitting a nice balance between chamber-capacity and handiness of size, we couldn't think of any better shape than the Eltang Devil Anse to represent our 15th Anniversary pipe. It didn't hurt either that this was an Eltang design which, until very recently, had been available only in Europe.