Nanna Ivarsson: Smooth Tomato with Bamboo (BN) (2324) Tobacco Pipe

Since 2015, Smokingpipes has hosted the American Pipe-Making Exposition, celebrating the ingenuity and talent of artisan carvers across the United States. However, in 2024 the Exposition expanded to include all pipe makers around the world — the Global Pipe-Making Exposition, the first of its kind. Though broadened in participation, the Expo's format remained consistent with previous years: Artisans designed and fashioned pipes centered on a singular theme, distinct to each year, expressing the motif according to their own creative visions. For the first Global Pipe-Making Exposition, we returned to the Expo's very first theme: bamboo.

In many ways, Nanna Ivarsson is a traditionalist among pipe makers. Her portfolio comprises singular, artful designs that honor her father's and grandfather's pipe-making aesthetics and Danish pipe making as a whole, while also expanding the narrative with her own creative lens, yet she typically allows the briar's natural beauty and her shaping to define her pipes. She rarely, if ever, uses exotic accent materials or contemporary color palettes; her pipes could very well have been made 60 years ago or yesterday. Her aesthetic is timeless and distinctive, and there's a reason why collectors the world over clamor for the opportunity to own even just one of her prestigious pipes.

That context is what makes this Nanna so special. She's approached the Expo with an innovative spirit while also remaining true to herself as an artist. As a shape, this Tomato is indisputably the work of Nanna: the gracefully rounded and plump bowl, the sleek bamboo, and the demure, expertly hand-cut stem. Yet, she's rendered it from completely non-traditional, avant-garde materials. The bowl is fashioned from a cluster of bamboo skewers that Nanna cast in resin and then shaped as if it were a briar block, but beyond that, she oriented the sticks to mimic briar's grain, with the length of the sticks resembling vertical grain around the bowl and the ends appearing like birdseye above and below.

Moreover, Nanna honors her own pipe-making process with these bamboo skewers. They're indispensable tools in her workshop, using them to mix glue, remove wax, and clean plateau, and these specific sticks are over 30 years old, having procured them in Tokyo when she visited Japan with her father Lars and for the first time. To solidify the bamboo theme, the shank is extended by three knuckles of bamboo, their rhythm continuing through the stem base, and the tobacco chamber is composed of a briar insert — well-aged briar original from the late Bo Nordh's stock, as referenced by this pipe's "BN" stamp.