Sandblasted Tomato with Bamboo Tobacco Pipe

Among Italy's most skilled and artful pipe maker, Angelo del Prete crafts Il Cerchio pipes from his workshop in Pordenone, Italy. A true student of pipes, del Prete boasts a portfolio that ranges from archetypal shape-chart standards to creative designs all their own — each piece combining a reverence for historic makers before him with his own personal shaping style.

This Tomato in particular well reflects del Prete's distinctive design style, especially toward bent, rounded forms. He regularly enjoys harmonizing the interplay between disparate curves within a pipe composition, combining bulbous elements of the shank, stem, and bowl altogether while retaining their own separate dispositions. This Tomato is more reserved than those iterations, but it still exemplifies del Prete's deft approach to curving lines: The stem and shank combine in a beautiful S-curve, with the stem's recurve perfectly matching that bamboo's natural upturn, and the raised transition emphasizes the bowl's plump heel. Adding yet more curvature to the design, del Prete presents a concave rim, left smooth to contrast against the rest of the stummel's craggy sandblast. A beautiful showcase of elegant line work and sinuous gesture, this piece offers comfortable smoking enjoyment alongside premium craftsmanship, and an eye-catching color palette.