Manduela: Sandblasted Bent Bulldog with Bone Tobacco Pipe

If I had to pick two independent artisans to compare to Manduela, they would be Poul Ilsted and Chris Askwith. Poul's a natural choice, as Manduela actually held a formal apprenticeship with the Danish master, and many of her designs exhibit strong Ilsted-inspired shaping cues. But the latter? Well, we've long referred to Chris' work as, "classics for the extrovert," due to his use of bold color palettes dressing classical shapes. That extroverted style is also present in Manduela's work as well, often combining her Danish classic or neo-classical forms with striking accents and/or colorful vulcanite mouthpieces. We can see both of these allusions here in this bent Bulldog.

The Ilsted influence is certainly there, but Manduela's played with the theme to create something all her own. By limiting the bend of the shank and stem, Manduela has transformed one of her signature Bulldog shapes here into something much firmer and forward-racing, allowing those hard lines created by her use of Ilsted-inspired paneling along the shank to guide the eye horizontally across the entire composition. It's a strikingly modernist take on the classic shape, well-rooted in Manduela's stylistic neo-classical background, but presented in, again, a very extroverted style — you don't see all that many deep blue, bone-accented vulcanite stems, after all.

- Andrew Wike