David Huber: Smooth Tomato with Bamboo (31/24) 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.

David Huber's work often pushes the envelope of pipe design, with a style that can range from bold reinterpretations of chart-standard archetypes to overtly sculptural works thoroughly rooted in the Japanese school. This Tomato strikes me as one of the most remarkably organic pipes we've ever seen from Huber, with an outline that emphasizes the namesake reminiscence of its fruit-inspired shape. The bowl of this pipe is remarkably broad, displaying a squat, stout build that stands atop a subtly pointed heel, with this heel supporting hearty walls as they flare out dramatically to a mid-set waistline. The waist's breadth not only creates a palm-filling presence in hand, but it contributes to a soft, implied ridge that manifests as the heel and rim taper swiftly to their respective endpoints. A Saucer-like take on the bowl, this beefsteak-style tomato is paired to an ovoid shank via a wide, cinched transition, creating further rounding across the bowl's walls without making a defined cleft.

This oval shank is canted and curved to meet an asymmetrical stretch of bamboo that comprises three knuckles of the sturdy grass, which makes its own curling arc to meet the stem. A trim band of black vulcanite acts as the junction to the bamboo, and the junction to the stem is lined with a ring of brass that allows the stylized saddle stem of black vulcanite to push-mount sturdily. This stem's base is carved to continue the natural rhythm of the bamboo, and it's set at an angle, with the flanks of its saddle featuring a crisp paneling that dramatizes the asymmetry of its stylized "knuckle" to great effect. Surrounding the natural knuckles of bamboo are small nodules, and each of these has been finished in epoxy alongside the face of the bamboo itself, sealing it and protecting it while also offering a subdued accent. Huber's great attention to detail about this bamboo is further magnified when looking through the draft channel, as he's made the painstaking step of lining the entirety of the bamboo's channel with briar: a massively difficult task. Dressed in a warm, rich stain and low-gloss smooth finish, the stummel showcases flame wrapping around the circumference of the bowl, while the underside and rim are awash with birdseye.