David Huber (2023) Sandblasted Speeding Volcano with Horn (Unsmoked Estate)

Few pipe makers can claim such a meteoric rise as David S. Huber. While Huber only began making pipes in 2012, doing so as a hobbyist while working as a freelance designer, it would not be long before demand for his pipes allowed him to commit to making them full time. Huber’s resolutely avant-garde approach to shaping makes his pipes unlike almost anything else on the market, while his mentorship from other carvers, including  Jeff “J. Alan” Gracik, Tom Eltang, Per & Ulf of S. Bang, Hans “Former” Nielsen, and Nanna Ivarsson, has ensured that such daring aesthetics are accompanied by the level of technical precision that pulling them off necessitates.

In part due to his Japanese influence, a common throughline across David Huber’s works is motion. Like Tokutomi or Gotoh before him, he is an artisan fascinated with the question of how to communicate movement through static forms. The fugu is a staple in Huber’s output, for example, which is unsurprising given that it is a shape with an almost unrivaled capacity for asymmetry and fluidity without losing its defining essence. But the fugu is far from the only shape Huber works with. In fact, there are some shapes that one might not expect to fit with the aesthetic Huber typically pursues, yet which he has nonetheless made into thoroughly mobile signatures.

The volcano is one such shape. Given that its namesake is a geological formation, speed is hardly its overriding connotation. Yet the way Huber carves his volcanoes, warping their posture and contours, expresses a very real sense of being “on the move.”

This pipe is completely unsmoked, with an original bowl coating.

Details:

Length: 5.4″ / 137.1mm

Bowl Width: 0.66 / 16.76mm

Bowl Depth: 1.06″ / 26.92mm

Weight: 1.1oz / 32g