Sam Adebayo: Smooth Bent Apple with Bakelite and Juma Tobacco Pipe

There are several obvious things to say about this Adebayo Apple: it's charmingly full-bodied, it's very nicely grained and warmly finished, it's distinctive for Sam's use of not only vibrant vintage bakelite but also pale, creamy juma. Less obvious is his rather unusual use of plateau. Yes, there is plateau: the barest, and I mean barest kiss of it lightly scattered along the underside of the shank and transition. Light hints of sanded-down plateau are not all that unusual, but you usually see them on Japanese or Japanese-influenced briars in places such as one of the panels of a Blowfish, or as various makers will use it on a rim. In other words, in obvious places. Despite the colorful palettes Sam obviously has a penchant for (and which he did use here), it's pretty clear he knows how to do subtlety as well.

- Eric N. Squires