Well. After my last big commission project a couple years ago (A 7 day set of Alaska themed pipes from various carvers) I immediately found myself itching to dream up another fun project. After brainstorming and saving some coin for a couple years, I thought it would be fun to commission various carvers to create the same shape, with full artistic freedom. I decided that the shape that allows for the most variance in artistic interpretation (and that I am actually fond of) would the the classic cutty.
So with that in mind, I decided to have even more fun with it by turning it into a sort of informal competition. Last August, I commissioned what I consider to be 16 of the best carvers in the world, 8 from the United States, and 8 International carvers, to create their interpretation of the Cutty shape with very minimal restrictions. After all I want to enjoy smoking the damn things, and keep things fair, so the rules were as follows.
1. The pipe must be 5.5 inches or less, and weigh no more than 2oz.
2. The pipe must have 1/4 bend or less.
3. The pipe must be sandblasted.
Everything else, stem material and colors, accents, finishes, undernipple or not, cant, shaping, etc. was entirely up to the carver. All questions throughout the process related to these elements were simply answered "It is entirely up to you."
Now that I have all of the pipes in hand, I have created a March Madness style bracket (Cutty Madness?) to determine a winner. Similar to our beloved American sports leagues, each side of the bracket will organized by conference (USA on one side, International on the other) until a champion from each side goes head to head in the final to determine, for lack of a better title, a Cutty World Champion.
So with that, keep your eyes peeled in the coming weeks for individual matchups in this first round of 16. All matchups will be listed blind, and the carvers and their origin countries will not be listed until the competition has ended. If you believe you can identify the carver based on characteristics of the pipe, please try to keep that information to yourself!
Here we go! This should be fun.
Frank
So with that in mind, I decided to have even more fun with it by turning it into a sort of informal competition. Last August, I commissioned what I consider to be 16 of the best carvers in the world, 8 from the United States, and 8 International carvers, to create their interpretation of the Cutty shape with very minimal restrictions. After all I want to enjoy smoking the damn things, and keep things fair, so the rules were as follows.
1. The pipe must be 5.5 inches or less, and weigh no more than 2oz.
2. The pipe must have 1/4 bend or less.
3. The pipe must be sandblasted.
Everything else, stem material and colors, accents, finishes, undernipple or not, cant, shaping, etc. was entirely up to the carver. All questions throughout the process related to these elements were simply answered "It is entirely up to you."
Now that I have all of the pipes in hand, I have created a March Madness style bracket (Cutty Madness?) to determine a winner. Similar to our beloved American sports leagues, each side of the bracket will organized by conference (USA on one side, International on the other) until a champion from each side goes head to head in the final to determine, for lack of a better title, a Cutty World Champion.
So with that, keep your eyes peeled in the coming weeks for individual matchups in this first round of 16. All matchups will be listed blind, and the carvers and their origin countries will not be listed until the competition has ended. If you believe you can identify the carver based on characteristics of the pipe, please try to keep that information to yourself!
Here we go! This should be fun.
Frank
![394346_1[9].jpg](https://pipesmagazine.com/forums/data/attachments/198/198730-46eccfe72772113325b6284e3e5c791e.jpg "394346_1[9].jpg")
