Sabina Santos: Sandblasted Bent Dublin with Mammoth Tobacco Pipe

Sabina Santos' journey into pipe making began with a desire to create: to make something substantial and beautiful that was more than just the sum of its parts. She found her perfect artistic medium in briar, and her perfect subject in pipes after being inspired by her husband's pipe smoking. Though she began her carving career as an autodidact informed by various internet sources, she later traveled to Denmark, spending a good deal of time working with some of the world's most venerated artisans, including Tom Eltang, Hans "Former" Nielsen, and Kurt Balleby. Once returning to her home country of Portugal, she knew she would go back, and when she did she spent ample time Former, these experiences solidifying her shaping style and enhancing her shaping, finishing, and engineering expertise. This bent Dublin is an excellent example of her work, with elements of both Danish and American influence, though it is certainly all Santos.

There's a great sense of balance about this pipe that I appreciate very much, with the twin flares present at the shank and stem working in tandem with each other to center the visual weight at the transition. This is not due entirely to the flares, but also to the domed, slightly green-hued fitment of mammoth tusk at the shank end and the baby-blue/turquoise saddle stem that ebbs out of it, creating a locus of intense visual intrigue that is able to easily balance the more pronounced presence of the bowl. Said bowl sits atop a sweeping heel whose easy curvature urges it forward a good deal, creating a dynamic posture that places further emphasis on the flare of the walls. This flare terminates in a domed rim which surrounds the inward-sloping chamber, its breadth promising plenty of insulation against warm embers. The transition here is quite tightly knit, angling the shank upward and poising the stem for comfortable smoking, all while enhancing the active dynamism of the silhouette. Dressing this piece is a deep, dark sandblast that unveils stacks of ring grain throughout the bowl, offering lovely texture and contrasting strikingly against the stem and mammoth accent for a look that is utterly unmissable.