J. Mouton: Partially Sandblasted Pickaxe with Bamboo and Horn 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.

Based in Gueydan, Louisiana, Jason Mouton fashions immaculately manicured designs that are at once dynamic and elegantly refined. This Pickaxe is one of the most stylized and intricate designs we've ever seen from the American carver, though his proclivity for forward-thrusting momentum is maintained. Said momentum is most evident at the bowl, which gradually expands from a pointed, rearward-oriented heel to a broad rim. The totality of the bowl resembles a Horn tilted on its end, and it possesses that shape's signature crescent-like silhouette. A trim shank emerges from the bowl's high-set transition and gives way to five knuckles of bamboo. The dense grass mirrors the bowl and gradually expands upward, terminating at an accent of creamy horn that also mirrors the accent at the bowl's heel. From that point, a long saddle stem takes over and arcs toward its button for a comfortable smoking posture. Mouton has dressed this piece in a striking dual finish, with a crisp sandblast highlighting tight growth rings along the bowl's flanks and a smooth polish accentuating a sea of birdseye across the pipe's fore.