Hiroyuki Tokutomi: Smooth Lovat Tobacco Pipe

No, you clicked the right link. This really is a Tokutomi lovat, the second one that we have had the pleasure of representing, out of a total body that approaches a thousand pipes. As you you can clearly see, the lessons that Tokutomi learned during his year long stay with Sixten Ivarsson in the seventies, have stayed with the student, well past the time that the pupil ascended to master. With this lovat, Toku-san pointedly did not mix aesthetics; this shape is as orthodox in Western form, as his Nihon work is wild, complex and challenging. Moreover, this lovat is as bold of dimensions as it is non-equivocating in its classicism. Broad swaths of cross cut are posted on the front and rear of the bowl, and the sides contain a birdseye that would easily have qualified as "tiger's eye", in the parlance of the seventies. You really have to hand it to Tokutomi, he is about as far from a "one trick" carver as it gets.

--Bear Graves