Radice: Clear Billiard (F) (E) Tobacco Pipe

After working at Castello and Caminetto, Luigi Radice founded Radice and began carving pipes with his sons. Radice has since become one of the most recognizable and influential pipe brands in Italy. They offer high-quality smoking instruments marked by bold, Italian neoclassical proportions and distinctive finishes, with this Billiard being a prime example of the workshop's style. Compared to the other designs in Radice's portfolio, this Billiard is rather compact, measuring just under four and a half inches long, its reduced size making it perfect for on-the-go smoking. Though the overall composition is compressed, the bowl here is quite tall, and it houses a rather deep tobacco chamber within its thick-walled frame. In typical Italian neoclassical fashion, the bowl holds most of the visual weight within the composition, its height and bulk overshadowing the comparatively lean shank-and-stem arrangement. The striking Clear finish dresses the ensemble and highlights fine strands of flame grain across the bowl's flanks.