Yuwei: Smooth Blowfish Tobacco Pipe

Yuwei Huang often employs an organic, asymmetrical aesthetic when crafting his pipes, while wearing his American and Danish influences on his sleeve. That's what makes this Blowfish such a stimulating, distinctive piece within Yuwei's porfolio. It's a shape that has roots in Japanese pipe making, but the talented Taiwanese carver makes it all his own, crafting the shape with an eye for the piece as a unified whole, one replete with soft, naturalistic features and plenty of creativity.

Yuwei has a distinctive eye, like many talented artisans, for crafting a shape that most readily accentuates the natural inclination of the briar, and that eye is on full display with this piece. The rounded, paneled sides that often define the Blowfish shape are present, with added fluting channels and starkly defined ridgelines that extend off and above the flanks of the stummel, creating a dynamic, Freehand-inspired profile. Dense fields of birdseye spot those same flanks, while cross grain runs from the underside of the shank, across the fore of the pipe, and across the top of the rim. It's all dressed in a stunning, dark chestnut finish and topped off by a playful, dramatic saddle stem of jet-black vulcanite, the shoulders of the stem rectangular in design. Lightweight and petite, coming in under five inches in length, this piece possesses all the refined grace and masterful execution expected from a artisan of Yuwei's talent.