Smooth Sitter Blowfish with Cocobolo Ferrule Tobacco Pipe

Those of you who have been following the work of Hiroyuki Tokutomi on this site already know what a rare find this sitter-blowfish is. We are fortunate enough receive them from time to time, but they are off to collectors around the world within hours, sometimes within minutes. The standing demand for Toku-san's work keeps the overwhelming majority of his art from ever seeing public cyber space.

Tokutomi-san is known for producing shapes that are non-linear and highly organic, and the bowl of this pipe falls consistently within that design aesthetic. Having said that, there is a bit of reigning in of implied space, and greater use of the asymmetrical sphere than we have seen as of late. The left of the bowl features the superimposition of a disc shape over a larger, identical form, with the latter showing such a strong collapse that the former seems to acquire an event horizon. The right of this blowfish offers a comfortable, charmingly soft bulge that gains emphasis with a subtly carved fin to the aft. With his vertical sitters, Tokutomi adds visual and structural stability to his compositions through the use of bold shanks and bits that are solidly grounded within Katachi shaping principles. The juxtaposition of the two widely varying sides of the bowl with a highly recognizable shank, bit, and back center bevel, unifies and completes a wonderful, overarching composition.