Peter Heding: Smooth Long Shank Bent Egg with Masur Birch (Diamond) Tobacco Pipe

With a shaping style steeped in the Danish artisan tradition, Peter Heding is among Denmark's premier artisan pipe makers. His résumé is elevated by tutelage from Tom Eltang, and Heding's quality craftsmanship is matched by his artistic eye, often drawing inspiration from masters before him combined with his own creative vision.

Having received his highest grade of Diamond, this bent Egg is among Heding's most prestigious works. It's a stunning composition that finds perfect harmony between grain and shape. A band of cross grain bisects the form to leave seas of birdseye across each flank, covering the pipe's entire profile. As a design, it coheres elegance and muscularity in a seemingly contradictory manner: Despite the shank's robust proportions and the bowl's substantial roundness, the design still retains a soft and fluid demeanor. It's a serpentine design, flowing through the elongated shank and into the bowl via a consistent undercurve that founds the composition. The undefined transition further adds to the piece's singular, snake-like presence, and the half-saddle stem offers the only hint of structure or rigidity, breaking up the silhouette's lines for visual texture and to draw focus to the masur birch accent adorning the stem base.