Mike Sebastian Bay: Rusticated Bent Egg Tobacco Pipe

In the years since his mentorship under Tom Eltang, Mike Bay has blossomed into one of Denmark's most esteemed and prolific young artisans. His shaping style, while influenced by Eltang, reveals Bay's own creative vision across myriad finishes and an eclectic array of accent materials. Tastefully toeing the line between classic and individual, Bay's portfolio delights with distinctive renditions of favorite shapes, each singular, captivating, and imbued with world-class engineering.

Sleek, aerodynamic, and lightweight, this bent Egg rendition sees Bay exploring a more extroverted color palette with varying accents of vulcanite: The shank end features one of bright blue and turquoise, while the stem reveals a more ruddy, cumberland hue. By contrast, the stummel's finish remains reserved, with a dark stain and a lighter rim to match the stem, and the dense rustication is Bay's signature take on Eltang's iconic rustication, the younger Dane lending his own interpretation of the finish to display a diagonal pattern across the bowl. It's an elegant and refined version of the classic Danish Egg, yet brought to life by Bay's recognizable finish and a burst of color.

-Truett Smith