Konstantin Shekita Sandblasted Fugu Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

Description

Konstantin Shekita is a Ukrainian artisan pipe-maker – in fact, one of the first of his kind in Ukraine. In his life, Shekita has been a sportsman and a stuntman, but his work with pipes first began in the 1990s, in Ukraine’s Golden Gate pipe factory. Here, Shekita learned to make machine-made pipes; in the 2000s, he began to create hand-made, artisan pipes under the Shekita name.

In the natural world, the blowfish and the fugu are the same creature; in pipe-making, they are related, but distinct. The blowfish pipe is marked by a round side profile, paired with flat planes on one or either side, creating a curiously vertical figure. The fugu – the Japanese name for the creature in question – takes the formal elements that inspired the blowfish and accentuates them, so that the pipe even further resembles its namesake. This pipe from Konstantin Shekita is most definitely a fugu, and is one of the most firmly aquatic designs that I’ve seen in a long time. The sandblasting, which quite masterfully manages to trace the briar’s ring grain patterns in an arc from shank to rim, further adds to the fugu theme, almost resembling the contours of the fish’s scales.

This Shekita is completely unsmoked, having come to us, via our trade-in program, from a collector of high-grade pipes. It also comes with its original sleeve.

 

Details:

Length: 4.5″ / 114.3mm

Bowl Width: 0.81 / 20.57mm

Bowl Depth: 1.65″ / 41.91mm

Weight: 1.7oz / 50g