Silver Gray: Sandblasted Eskimo Egg with Cocobolo Tobacco Pipe
Product Number: 002-775-0076
A former accountant with more than a decade of pipe-making experience, Silver Gray came into the pipe world by way of her partner, artisan pipe maker Brad Pohlmann. Her fist carvings made use of briar scrap, before working her way up to discarded stummels, and finally, raw burl, honing her aesthetic and learning the equipment around her until finding herself at a level of mastery. Silver's personal style is a wholly unique one that's seen the development of a variety of signature shapes, and her portfolio showcases these signature profiles regularly, much to the delight of her enthusiasts: oftentimes paired to her painstakingly crafted recreations of Peterson's NAP stem.
The Eskimo Egg is one of Gray's most subtly stylized signature shapes, the fusion of the two shapes resulting in a remarkably understated composition that is, yet, rich with dynamism throughout its silhouette. The bowl here retains the expected shaping conventions of the Egg, comprising plump walls that stand atop a rounded heel, expanding gently as they reach up to a low-set waistline before taking on an arcing taper to the rim. Though the bowl looks almost perfectly Egg-like in profile, an aerial perspective reveals an ovoid shape that pushes out the flanks, making for a robust, reassuring feel in hand without adding too much extra weight. The transition here is wide enough to drape a digit, with a subtle bit of added carving around the shank that emphasizes the curves of the bowl, though it's not quite cheeked. The shank lifts out of the transition here and showcases this pipe's Eskimo influence, as it comprises a short, thick, and compressed length of briar that would be ovoid in outline if it weren't for the four panels surrounding it. These panels create a crisp, diamond shape whose firmness continues into the tapering curve of the stem, which marries to the shank at a band of handsome cocobolo wood. The enhanced musculature of this pipe from the smoker's perspective lends it plenty of intrigue, Silver's keen eye for detail making this pipe an endlessly dynamic one, and it's a piece that showcases handsome grain as well, dressed here in a crisp, earthy sandblast. This blast is further complemented by both the cocobolo accent and the stem, with the stem here crafted from a brindled length of black and sand-colored vulcanite.
-John McElheny
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SoldMeasurements & Other Details
- Length: 5.76 in./146.30 mm.
- Weight: 2.50 oz./70.87 g.
- Bowl Height: 2.21 in./56.13 mm.
- Chamber Depth: 1.79 in./45.47 mm.
- Chamber Diameter: 0.81 in./20.57 mm.
- Outside Diameter: 1.85 in./46.99 mm.
- Stem Material: Vulcanite
- Filter: None
- Shape: Bent Egg
- Finish: Sandblast
- Material: Briar
- Country: United States