Ken Dederichs: Sandblasted Elephant's Foot with Boxwood Tobacco Pipe

A Germany-based, Japanese pipe maker, Ken'ichiro Dederichs-Uchida goes by the name Ken Dederichs and produces pipes evocative of a mixture of Danish and Japanese designs. His style is organic, often giving us creative, artisanal interpretations of classic designs — always rendered with precision and great attention to detail.

This is the very first time we have received an Elephant's Foot from Ken, a design invented by the legendary Bo Nordh, and I love what he has done with the shape. The bowl is a plump rendition, with swelling fore and aft sections meeting at a softened ridgeline on both flanks, and does well to accentuate a wealth of blasted birdseye on the near and far surfaces. The ink-black sandblast provides a stimulating presence in hand, while a lighter smooth finish adorns the inflated rim, providing excellent contrast and showcasing the briar's grain striations. The transition is raised and pinched, yielding an organic nuance, and is topped by a smoothly flaring boxwood accent for a clean visual break between stummel and stem. The stem is a lithely bent, hand-cut vulcanite mouthpiece, curling just slightly to offer a comfortable smoking posture.