Gabriele: Sandblasted Tomato (Turtle) Tobacco Pipe

Crisp ridgelines, organic shaping, and meticulously precise geometry combine for a presentation of impressive pipe making in this Tomato from Gabriele Dal Fiume of Italy. While the bowl is in the softly rounded and compressed Tomato shape, intuitive in hand and irresistibly curved, it's imbued with a single groove transiting the bowl vertically from the forward rim to the back, sloping under the heel and up the flanks with crisp ridgelines on either side. It's an element that could well have been over-engineered, but Gabriele has maintained an understated attitude with it, not permitting this design feature to interfere with the visually stimulating curvature of the stummel.

The shank is an important component of this overriding stratagem, and while it presents a sharp and distinct pair of ridgelines sweeping down its underside and into the heel, and a top ridgeline meeting the transition and dissipating into the forward side of the bowl, it also maintains natural curvature in profile. Its cross section is a Reuleaux triangle, a remarkable shape utilized in drill bits for drilling square holes (I'm not making that up; it's true). The face of the shank end is smooth with vertical grain paralleling the grain of the bowl and curving inward at its edges. The sandblast is medium-deep, again maintaining the organic shaping of the bowl, and with the contrast stain, elevates the tight vertical strands of grain as well as the horizontal growth rings. The piece also sits stably on a flat surface, for those moments when viewing the entire pipe is as desirable as smoking it.