Scottie Piersel: Sandblasted Pencil Shank Dublin with Juma Tobacco Pipe

American artisan Scottie Piersel has, in her years, committed herself to perfection, both in construction and in style, the latter of which is utterly her own and charmingly singular in its outlook on design. Many of Scottie's pieces showcase rather large bowls with stolid, upright walls, slight forward cants, and cheeking about the transition, with all of this paired to an extremely svelte, sleek length of pencil shank and stem. This same style is seen manifested in this straight Dublin, and her refinement of the profile's aspects are plain to see, as every line is straight, crisp, and calculated to be as fluid as possible when interacting with the others of its kind. Her honing in the construction department is a little more challenging to find, but it is certainly here, not just in the cleanness of the profile as a whole, but in the consistency of the girth of the shank and the Juma accent at the junction, with the raised nature of the latter speaking to Piersel's skill as a carver, given that it is extremely thin.

Speaking of thin, many may look at the shank and its pairing to a hearty, robust bowl and think to question the integrity of the arrangement, but Piersel has been honing her craft for so long that she has learned to account for this by fitting each of her pencil shanks with metal reinforcement in the form of stainless steel tubing that runs from the transition and out of the shank face, the stem fitting onto it in a reverse-tenon arrangement. The sense of proportion here is unique to Scottie's pipes, not in that it is extremely bowl-centric, but that she is somehow able to balance this bowl-centric build, making it so that, even if your attention is invariably drawn to the bowl, the shank and stem must be noticed, and the color contrast present on this pipe really helps that. The stem is a vibrant stretch of red and pink vulcanite, creating a strong color presence at the aft end, and the stummel wears a dark, chestnut sandblast, with the two hues separated by the Juma accent which, itself, is a vivid, creamy white, placing much of this pipe's emphasis on color right at the stem base.