Jared Coles: Sandblasted Acorn with Orange Wood Tobacco Pipe

For eight years, Jared Coles worked with John Klose on the J&J brand of artisan pipes before the duo decided to pursue their crafts separately. Now, Coles crafts pipes under his own name, and his portfolio ranges from traditional shape-chart standards to more free-flowing, organic designs. This Acorn is a fine example of the later, and it nicely recreates the sweeping curves and contours of Danish pipe making while still retaining the muscularity for which Coles' work is known.

This beefy design features a tall bowl that rises from a sweeping, dramatically lifted heel and flares to a bulbous rim and a high-set waistline. The heel drives the bowl forward and further accentuates its visual stature, while the oval shank escapes the low-set transition and curls upward into a saddle stem of jet-black vulcanite. The negative space between the bowl and shank gives room for the eyes to admire the polar-opposite trajectories of the stummel, drawing attention to and accentuating the curvature inherent to the pipe's construction. The stummel wears a crisp, dark sandblast that provides plenty of stimulation for the fingers to enjoy and draws out rippling waves of grain across the surface of the bowl. A particularly striking thing about this design is the incorporation of an orange wood accent, which here comprises the shoulders of the saddle mouthpiece and adds a dose of warmth to the design in profile.