Scottie Piersel: Relief Contrast Acorn with Bamboo Tobacco Pipe

Scottie Piersel's signature style is easily recognized by long, slender pencil shanks often adorned with colorful stems, and such trimly fashioned briar requires a deft hand and delicate touch when shaping. For this year's American Pipemaking Exposition, showcasing bamboo, Scottie presents us with her conventional aesthetic, but instead of a pencil shank of briar, she has utilized an extremely slender section of bamboo — in fact, it's the trimmest piece of bamboo Scottie has ever worked with, necessitating even more precision and patience when drilling and special tools to complete the task.

At the front, Piersel has poised a rounded, flaring, Belge-like bowl, seeming to grow up from out the bamboo. Continuing this organic motif, the rim is kissed subtly by natural plateau, and the bowl is dressed in a unique, relief contrast application. It's a new finish from Scottie, the briar having first been sandblasted and stained dark. Then, Piersel sands down the raised peaks of the blast by hand to subdue the texture while still maintaining the blasted grain's visual grooves. Lastly, she stains the smooth portions a lighter hue to contrast, matching beautifully with the dark and light tones of the bamboo and marrying the disparate mediums together. Finally, the entire composition is brightly adorned with a stem of crimson vulcanite and creamy ivorite accent, while the undulating saddle portion of the mouthpiece aligns perfectly with the spacing of the bamboo knuckles, balancing out the form.