Jody Davis: Smooth Freehand with Amboyna Burl (Cardinal) (A23) (59) Tobacco Pipe

Jody Davis is among the few artisans responsible for the current success and prestige that pipe making in the US now enjoys. Throughout the '70s and '80s, many American pipe makers looked to Italy for pipe design inspiration or riffed off of the Danish Fancy Freehand style that was especially popular in that time period. The '90s and '00s, though, saw a shift, with American artisans utilizing shaping methods and design aspects of Danish artisans who had adopted and adapted Sixten Ivarsson's "shape first, drill second" approach. Jody Davis was one of those pioneering American artisans, and he has since inspired and taught a number of current American carvers. As such, much of today's American artisan pipe-making aesthetic is informed by Davis's personal design aesthetic, riffing off of the Danish greats he admired through the '90s and early '00s.

This Freehand design exemplifies Davis's reinterpretation of classic Danish designs, often seen with a greater sense of muscularity, especially along the shank. A comparably reserved pieced in the realm of Freehands, this pipe reveals an Acorn-like bowl, gradually flaring from the heel before rounding inward at the plateau rim, but the shank is of particular interest: featuring the teardrop ridgeline associated with the Fish shape but not paired to a rounded, Apple or Egg bowl. Lars Ivarsson and Jess Chonowitsch have been well connected with the Fish shape and its characteristic teardrop shank, and here Davis riffs off of the iconically Danish design, fitting it to a more Acorn-like bowl and enhancing the shank's relative proportions. Having received his Cardinal grain, it's dressed in a handsome, auburn stain and accented with a multi-hued piece of amboyna burl along the shank end.