Smooth Brown Bent Dublin (Three 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 decided this bent Dublin was worthy of three Jellyfish, and it's easy to see why he decided this piece was in the upper echelon of his work: the flame grain of the bowl is dense and mostly straight, the birdseye of the wide, elliptical shank is various in size and shape but handsome all around, and the entire stummel is wonderfully smooth except for the craggy, muscular rim of the bowl. As is typical of a Dublin, the bowl is conical and leaves the heel with a generous point, but this Dublin is particularly large at over six and a half inches in length and just under one-fifth of a pound in weight. The black acrylic stem is very lightly bent near the bit to finish the profile of this well-crafted piece of Italian ingenuity, one that will be a welcome addition to any collection of lengthy, substantial works of briar.