Pete Prevost: Sandblasted Pipadelic Pot Tobacco Pipe

Pete Prevost's entry in the 2020 American Pipe Making Exposition, with the theme of "Influence," pays homage to one of Pete's mentor and friends: Bruce Weaver. Bruce, who passed away in 2019, was an esteemed pipe maker and helped Pete out years ago when the younger Prevost was first entering the world of artisan pipe making. The two carvers would share time together both inside and outside the workshop and Bruce became more than just a teacher for Pete but also a friend and someone he looked up to as a person. This Pot is as much a celebration of Bruce as a person as it is a commemoration of his pipe making style.

Those familiar with Weaver's work will likely recognized his signature Pipadelic aesthetic, a play on "psychedelic" that displayed outrageous color palettes. In line with that style, Pete presents this sandblasted Pot. The shape itself is indicative of Prevost's personal style — rendered here in compact, chubby proportions — but the finish and palette are Bruce's Pipadelic through and through. With crisply defined growth rings, each individual groove of the sandblast is stained a different, vivid hue, lending the pipe a technicolor aesthetic that's matched by the layered, multi-hued vulcanite composing the stem. Prevost sourced the vulcanite from Bruce's workshop and fashioned it in the split stem style that Weaver often featured in his work. In a way, then, Bruce had a hand in the making of this pipe, and it's a beautiful, artful celebration of his life, work, and character.