Mike Sebastian Bay: Sandblasted Billiard with Horn 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.

Falling squarely within the classic end of Bay's shaping spectrum, this Billiard exemplifies the classic Danish approach to the shape. In the early decades of briar-pipe making, French and English factories produced (and still produce) Billiards of a rather upright stance, with a slight forward taper but walls that rise vertically toward the rim. In later decades, Danish factories and artisan's added a softer aesthetic to that original Billiard design, crafting the bowl with a stronger taper toward the rim and a broader base often emphasized by a deeper transition. This Bay Billiard expresses that softer style of the Danish Billiard, offering an almost Brandy-like essence to the bowl when compared to French and English Billiards. To complement the refined shaping, Bay dressed this piece in a low-profile sandblast, with the rim left smooth to accent, and fitted it with a shank cap of creamy horn.