Sandblasted Origami with Bamboo Tobacco Pipe

A woodworker for years before he started making pipes in 2000, Todd Johnson's first pipe was a graduation gift for a friend that he says ignited his true love for smoking pipes. Todd formally studied aesthetics as a student at Samford University as an undergraduate and Yale University as a master's student, and credits both his aesthetics studies and his pipe-making studies from Danish legends Tom Eltang and Lars Ivarsson with influencing his work.

We don't often see the Origami — a signature shape of Todd's — on our site, making this remarkable design all the more special. The bowl's profile is akin to that of a Skater with its generous point at the heel and inward curve at the fore. Its grain is beautiful, as a rugged sandblast brings out vertical ring grain and plentiful flecks of birdseye throughout, all of it stained a lovely reddish-brown. A seven-knuckle length of bamboo stretches behind a stub of briar shank to provide an attractive, unique, and lightweight transition to the saddle stem, which is lightly bent and made of gray vulcanite with turquoise swirls. Pairing great grain with great shaping and intriguing materials, Todd's Origami is a work of functional art that certainly lives up to its title.