Kei-ichi Gotoh: Smooth Freehand Dublin (0116B) Tobacco Pipe

I'm having a hard time giving a name to the impression I get from this Gotoh. There's something floral about it, quite a bit in fact, but also something sharper, not so much in line as in motion; if a "Speeding Flower" were not such an absurd-sounding thing, I would call it that. Does anyone know what the airspeed velocity is of an unladen Honeysuckle?

Anyways, grain-wise as well as shape-wise we're looking at a lot of beauty here. That said, the thing that strikes me as most distinctly lovely is the rim, and Kei-Ichi's treatment of the plateau. We've seen partial plateau and single "kisses" of plateau used to good effect many times, but here we have an artisan creating a broader mixed surface, a fine, lightly dappled effect. This is fitting to the overall style, and I would call the impression it gives me rather Art Nouveau in nature; it does, indeed, remind me quite a bit of the lush effect Maigurs Knets produced in some of his mixed-finish work.

- Eric N. Squires