Tom Eltang: Smooth Bent Billiard with Mammoth (Snail) Tobacco Pipe

Perhaps the most iconic pipe shape, the bent Billiard has remained a pipe-chart staple for the better part of a century, exhibiting a reserved form that's wonderfully balanced and extremely practical, the defining S-curve offering a comfortable smoking posture. In the Danish tradition of pipe making, the Billiard shape often takes on a much softer, more rounded aspect, tapering toward the rim more so than English and French makers would fashion, and the shank usually flaring toward the stem.

Danish artisan Tom Eltang has enjoyed a career spanning more than four decades, and his portfolio boasts highly intricate designs as well as those of much more reserved, classic appeal, and this bent Billiard falls into that latter category. It's a textbook example of the Danish bent Billiard: The bowl is soft and supple in hand, and the curve of the heel flows seamlessly into the shank's upward curl before being balanced out by the stem's recurve. At the shank end, Tom has fashioned an accent of mammoth which flicks slightly outward, and the stem base reveals a domed aspect that visually "caps" the lines of the shank with subtle negative space evident in between. That domed stem base is an homage to vintage Danish pipe design, and it complements the stummel's rounded lines exceptionally well. Wearing Tom's walnut contrast stain, the briar's immaculate flame grain pattern in wonderfully defined, and it's lighter hues blend with the mammoth's intriguing, amber palette and intricate grain. A stunning interpretation of an age-old shape, this piece has earned Eltang's superlative Snail grade.