Davide Iafisco: Smooth Cobra with Buddha Belly Bamboo and Horn Tobacco Pipe

Since 2015, Smokingpipes has held the American Pipe Making Exposition, a celebration of America's finest artisans who gather together a bespoke selection of their best work, all revolving around a central theme. For 2024, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Expo, Smokingpipes has expanded participation to include entrants from around the world in what will henceforth be known as the Global Pipe Making Exposition. Fittingly, 2024's theme is bamboo, the same as the first Expo, and it's an opportunity for carvers worldwide to show off their most inventive, innovative compositions.

The Cobra is an extremely rare shape from Italian artisan Davide Iafisco, though it fits in well with his style of Danish-inspired pipes that showcase sophisticated lines and precise shaping. This iteration of the profile stands out, however, not just as being an uncommon shape from Iafisco, but as being one of if not the longest pipe of his we've ever come across at more than eight inches in length. Though the main focus of this pipe's construction is the bowl, retaining the majority of the visual weight, the stretch of shank and stem that follow it out of the transition naturally balance the monumental presence it maintains at the fore. A truly lovely interpretation of the classic Bo Nordh shape, this take on the profile features the shape's iconically paneled bowl, with a broad, subtly domed fore rounded by a crisp ridgeline. The ridge surrounds the entirety of the fore wall and defines the heel, creating a sharp look in silhouette that naturally draws the eye while keeping said silhouette fairly slim. A high-set waist is marked by an outward bow at both the fore and aft, keeping the feel in hand comfortable with added curvature, before the walls make a swift taper to the rearward-slanting, chamfered rim.

A wide transition pairs the bowl to a short, swiftly tapering shank whose presence naturally lifts out of the heel, and it's met by a long stretch of Buddha belly bamboo comprising five knuckles of the dense grass. As it extends the shank, the bamboo also continues its reach upward and outward, stretching out to meet a sleekly tapering stem of demurely curved cumberland. This combination cultivates a complex and visually enthralling silhouette, where the rugged and organic is flanked by smooth and softly curving materials shaped by man: the bamboo's contrasting texture contributing to this pipe's sense of compositional balance. Iafisco has also fitted this pipe with a subtle, yet striking series of small accents across each of the knuckles of bamboo, as the nodes that follow their rhythm are inlaid with domed disks of horn. Dressed in a rich, warm, mahogany-toned smooth finish, the stummel showcases the Cobra's iconic orientation and coveted pattern: with cross grain surrounding the bowl's ridge and framing a vast ocean of birdseye at the fore wall.