A "Swimming" Elephant's Foot? - 2

Notes on the design of a new pipe

Grade 45, made in 2005

2.  Origins of the "Swimming Elephant" ... (beginning)

(Written 2005)

I may be completely wrong about this ... but comparing this wonderful pipe with the other elephant's foot pipes that Teddy carved at the beginning of 2005, I think I see within its shape considerable resonance from Alien, Seal and Whale.  Indeed, when I first looked at this pipe after I unpacked it, I said to myself, "The Elephant is swimming!"

The angle of the shank's entry into the bowl, along with its lower entry-point than on some other elephant-foot designs;  the extended, swept-back line of the straight-grain side panel;  the rippling contours of the bowl's rim ... all seem  reminiscent of Teddy's "aquatic" (and some of his "science fiction") pipes.  While I suspect that Teddy has used most (if not all) of these lines before in earlier elephant-foot pipes, I still think it likely that when "Swimming Whale" emerged out of its block of briar, Teddy's imagination was receiving at least some of its inspiration from his more recent, "non-pachyderm" creations.

I'll let most of  following photos to speak for themselves.

Connections between the "Swimming Elephant" and the first "Whale" (below) are more tenuous, though I suppose I'd suggest first of all that the carvings share a general feeling of sweeping movement, forward and upward.  (For example, consider how the upper-front of the bowl is shaped on each pipe).  But I think I'd also argue that the panel-like edge along both sides of "Whale" could be considered analogous to the straight-grain panel on the sides of the elephant's foot.  Is it at all useful to imagine "Whale" as a "Swimming Elephant" with the rear panel-edge blended into the back of the bowl?   Or to see "Swimming Elephant" in part as a "Whale" whose back has been pinched into a panel edge?  Again, with questions like these, I'm not trying to evoke a block diagram that shows how a carver moves from one shape to another.  I mean only to speculate, in a rather free-form way, about what undercurrents of influence and suggestion may resonate within the hands of a pipe-maker as he holds his briar against the shaping wheel.

The extra forward motion of the "Swimming Elephant" becomes quite obvious when you compare it with other elephant-foot pipes.  Consider the variation on the elephant's foot that Teddy dubbed "Klingon Woman."  Here the pointed bottom focuses the downward vertical energy of the bowl, even though its overall shape contains considerable fluidity and grace, due to the rippling rim, the lovely fluted curves, and the way the grain radiates outward from the shank.