Smooth Brown Bulldog (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.

Unusually, this two-jellyfish Bulldog from Valbruna features an ovoid shank rather than diamond-shaped. The grain is quite striking — heavy birdseye speckles the fore and aft of the bowl and topside and underside of the shank, with cross grain elsewhere. The bowl is canted lightly forward, and the finish is irresistibly smooth to the touch with a dark brown hue, nicely paired with the jet black of the acrylic stem. Though the shank is especially wide, the entire piece still manages to weigh in at less than one-tenth of a pound.