Scott Klein: Smooth Horn Tomato Tobacco Pipe

Scott Klein has an acute skill for fusing a sense of substantial plumpness with an easy-flowing form, a feat we've seen him perform with briar for quite some time. Supplant the briar with dark, iridescent horn, however, and you've got something quite different. Indeed, this piece from the carver for our 2018 American Pipemaking Exposition is fashioned from horn— a single piece, in fact — inset with a briar bowl. The stem is shaped to match up with the shank's natural striations perfectly, turned into a stepped saddle as a counterpoint to the bulbous bowl's form in profile. It's a fantastic piece, imbued with a warmer, lighter tone on the right flank than the left, and presenting a pleasantly full-bodied feel in hand.