2011 Adam Davidson Sandblasted Amoeba Estate Briar Pipe, American Estates

Description

A graduate of industrial design and of a less formal apprenticeship under Todd Johnson, Adam Davidson has become one of North America’s most renowned artisan pipe-makers. Davidson initially worked with Johnson on his Medici pipes, while also being employed as a refurbisher for one of America’s leading pipe dealers. He then went solo, soon rising among the ranks of the American handmade pipe scene until he arrived at a stature comparable to contemporaries such as Johnson and Jeff “J. Alan” Gracik.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this subtly unusual design from American master Adam Davidson may be one of his “amoeba” shapes. The story goes that Davidson’s amoeba first came about, as inventions tend to do, as a result of a problem. The problem was that, as Davidson was working with a piece of briar that ended up being too short to make a more conventional design—possibly, as many a pipe-maker has encountered, because this was what was left after the less usable material in the block had to be sloughed off. Davidson’s response was to mentally discard the litany of shapes that were simply too tall for his briar block, and to find a shape that wasn’t. A good pipe-maker might have looked to tradition and created something like a prince or a diplomat, or to modern pipe history, and gone with something like Sixten Ivarsson’s Ukulele; a great pipe-maker, on the other hand, would have used this opportunity to come up with something new. Davidson, being the latter, created the amoeba. Needless to say, it’s a squat design but, like its namesake, it’s also inherently asymmetrical, in a way that evokes certain Japanese schools of pipe design. Despite its relative lack of depth, Davidson has still managed to squeeze in a delicate ring grain sandblast, at the shank end of which is a ferrule that I think may be boxwood.

 -J.M.

The condition is great. There is some inner rim darkening, concentrated largely on the left side of the bowl, but nothing major. The pipe has been well looked after.

Note: for simplicity’s sake, and to appease our algorithmic overlords, I’m categorizing this as a “Dublin” shape for our catalog and search engine optimization.

 

Details:

Length: 5.2″ / 132.0mm

Bowl Width: 0.73 / 18.54mm

Bowl Depth: 1.07″ / 27.17mm

Weight: 1.6oz / 48g