Trey Rice: Smooth Bent Dublin Sitter with Bamboo and Mammoth Tobacco Pipe

Smokingpipes began hosting the American Pipe Making Expo in 2015, soliciting submissions from North America's premier carvers and affording them the opportunity to showcase their most inventive and creative work. For 2024, to celebrate the Expo's 10th anniversary, we've expanded our scope to accommodate carvers from all over the world, turning the American Pipe Making Expo into the Global Pipe Making Expo. Like in years past, the 2024 Expo revolves around a core theme, and appropriately, given the event's birthday, we've returned to our very first Expo's theme: bamboo.

Leveraging his background in woodworking and his keen eye for detail, Texas-based carver Trey Rice crafts bespoke pipes inspired by English, Danish, and American design traditions. This bent Dublin Sitter from Rice boasts a rather expressive, Danish-like character, its outline equal parts curvaceous, dynamic, and supple. As the name implies, this piece sits confidently — no small feat, considering the demure nature of the heel and the hefty, forward-surging bowl it supports. Said bowl comprises thick, insulating walls that rapidly expand and droop forward as they approach the wide, gently chamfered rim, with the totality of the bowl evoking the look of a flower beginning to bloom. This floral motif is continued through the pipe's aft, especially along the shank, which is extended by a long stretch of bamboo, each knuckle of which is evenly spaced. The thoughtful spacing of the bamboo fosters a visual rhythm from the transition to the base of the saddle stem, and to emphasize this spacing, Rice has accented each node of the dense grass with a small bead of mammoth, alternating the placement of this additional accent along the top and bottom of the bamboo. A glossy, ruby-hued smooth finish rounds out this ensemble and highlights a lively showing of flame grain and birdseye throughout the stummel.