Toku's Playful Improvisations on the Horn

Some of Tokutomi’s compositions can be difficult to appreciate fully unless you are familiar with the route he has followed to reach that particular design. Again, I think of a jazz analogy: if you only hear the final few bars of a trumpeter’s solo, his music won’t make as much sense to you as if you had followed his improvisations from the beginning.

The following sequence of pipes illustrates how Tokutomi can play with a shape. In the spring of 2003, he carved a subtly asymmetrical Delta horn, with slightly twisted body. (Far left.) Toku then pushed and prodded the form in different directions. First he added a curling tail and flexible front. (Second from left.) Then he rounded the "head" and added a "goatee." (Middle.) Next, he recalled the Delta’s triangular face but molded and softened its contours while retaining the goatee. (Second from right.) This line of development culminated in December 2004 with an astonishing "floppy" horn, whose undulating lines and asymmetrical forms make the briar appear soft as clay.  (Far right.)

The appearance of the "brow and goatee" on the middle horn above at first perplexed me considerably. I discussed the pipe with Sykes Wilford, proprietor of Smokingpipes.com, and (not for the first time when confronting one of his new shapes) we wondered what Toku could have had in mind. A sleeping lion? A mountain? Then I remembered a familiar design from Teddy Knudsen: the upright horn with plateau ridge along the bottom.

 I juxtaposed one of these pipes from Teddy with Toku’s piece ... and the composition suddenly snapped into focus. Toku’s new pipe could be viewed, in part, as a playful improvisation upon a theme by Teddy.

Later horns – in particular, a sequence in 2005 that led to a brand new shape called the "Manta" – show even more clearly that Toku, whether consciously or not, sometimes takes a familiar Teddy motif and "plays it in Toku-style." Note, below, the whimsical exaggeration and extension of Teddy’s plateau ridge (and Toku’s earlier goatee) into a "tongue."

Another Toku horn carved at the same time seems to pick up on Teddy's characteristic reddish stain and "Tokuize" it:

I don’t know if Toku was aware that the elegant play which led to his floppy horn probably included a few "Teddyish licks."  Certainly whatever imaginative elements Tokutomi draws upon, he reworks them thoroughly and makes them his own. The floppy horn transforms – even transfigures – any original prototype. The undulating, pliable surfaces (smooth on top, rough on the bottom) create shifting planes of movement that encourage our fingers to move continuously up, down, and around the pipe. The lines and curves of the carving draw our eyes this way and that in a never-ending flow of visual energy and surprise. Our only point of rest might be that momentary pause when we focus our attention on a cluster of rippling grain lines … before our eyes go sliding down them as though they were streaks of water spilling over the pipe’s clay-like contours.

"Floppy Horn"  (2005)

(Due to changes in Toku’s grading system and a small flaw which Toku covered with a lovely ivory inlay, the "Floppy Horn" did not receive a special grade. To my eye it easily deserves either three snails or Hiro status.)

When I look at Toku and Teddy compositions side by side, I feel in the presence of two kindred imaginations, whose briar improvisations express similar ideas and impulses, even though their pipes speak in different languages that derive from different aesthetic traditions.

 POSTSCRIPT
Metamorphosis: Toku’s Horn Grows into "Manta"

Toku's imagination never stops improvising.  Quite soon after completing the "Floppy Horn," he began playing with the shape, pushing upon certain elements as though he were molding clay.  By splaying the sides and further twisting the spine, Toku transformed his "Floppy Horn" into a "Manta." The pipe with ivory shank and stem received a Hiro grade (one of Toku's first). The first "Manta" (right) is a three-snail pipe.