Having seen the photo and heard the whole scenario, I was surprised it was a hand-carved pipe by a well regarded craftsman.
In order to do creative work, you have to do a bad job now and then, and in terms of design, I'd put this in that category. Why?
It has a rough hewn appeal, and certainly the texture is distinctive, with both the fluted ridges and the rusticated pitting. But
things aren't brought together. The texture is brick-like, and not in a pleasant way, or like a drib of plaster that fell out of the
bucket. It does have a sort of scat look to it, or maybe like a dinosaur dropping. But it is an honorable failure, like a distinctly
poor poem or painting by a generally good artist. Some days, you are figuring something out, and you have to do one or two
really unsatisfactory pieces to get to the one you're after. Not a bad pipe to own, I'd say. There's a lot of information about
the process of getting to an altogether beautiful pipe in this less than beautiful pipe.