There are diverse carvers and carvers that execute a limited (but of stellar quality) number of shapes. One of the many things that I love about Michael Parks’ body of work is that his staggering diversity finds its equal within his quality of craftsmanship. While as well known for creating time honored classics as he is for his whimsical Special Series, Michael can smoothly shift gears and create hybrids that are so comfortingly intuitive that one would almost expect them to be included on a standard chart.

When I first glanced at this handsome briar, I had something of a pipe guy’s ‘Tastes Great!’ ‘Less Filling’ thing go on. ‘It’s a canadian. No, it’s an elongated apple.’ When a shape can pull me in two directions, and I would be equally happy at either destination, my ‘comfortingly intuitive hybrid’ definition has been well met. The deep mahogany tones of the stain speak of richness without ostentation, the hues evoke the old-money atmosphere of an English Gentleman’s club or the boardroom, not the flash of the nouveau riche, or 50 pounds of gold chains hanging around at the pool in a rap video. The shape is intriguing, not merely in the fact that a perfect sphere replaces the expected cylinder of the billiard, but in the discrete inclusion of triangularity, perhaps best seen with that pretty ridge on the underside of the shank. The grain itself follows the best of the English traditional pattern; a tight cross cut on the fore and aft, with a dense birdseye gracing both sides. This pipe is graded as a Maple Leaf VI, the highest of the Parks grades prior to the rarefied Special Series. One needn’t be plasma physicist to figure out why.

Bear Graves