Smooth Brown Volcano (Two Jellyfish) Tobacco Pipe

Ser Jacopo alum Simone Gaudenzi is well-trained in the Pesaro school of pipe making, which emphasizes clean lines and panache in design. Today, Gaudenzi crafts Valbruna pipes in the small town of Gabicce Mare on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, which plays an important role in the company's nomenclature: per Adriatic legend, Valbruna is a lost, sunken city like Atlantis. Gaudenzi ages the briar for his pipes, which are produced in limited quantities. True to his maritime roots, he uses Jellyfish to identify levels of quality.

Gaudenzi awarded two Jellyfish to this Volcano, a stout, large-heeled work of craftsmanship adorned with considerably tall flame grain and stained a dark brown that allows all of the stummel's natural grain to breathe with ease. It's a generous portion of briar even for a shape like a Volcano, reaching nearly a fifth of a pound in weight and featuring a sharp ridgeline on the underside to define the flat surface of the heel. Somewhat unusually for a Volcano, only the fore of the bowl takes on the heavily sloped shape, as the aft transitions very quickly into the top of the shank. The shank is very thick, nearly as high as the bowl and sharply turned upward into the tapered black acrylic of the lightly bent stem. It's a great example of Gaudenzi's ability to make a shape his own, and sits just as comfortably upright on a flat surface as it does in the hand.