INTRODUCTION

(written February 2008)

These huge pipes marked a major change in Tokutomi's work that saw him adding to his repertoire shapes that were bigger and bolder, lines that were sharper and more angular.  As Toku quickly showed, this startling new work did not represent a move away from softer, subtler, more organic forms, but rather the opening up of a wide range of new possibilities that the carver could explore.  This Manta and Horn, with their chunky bodies, sweeping rear "tail-fins," and oversized ebonite ferrules, soon led to other pipes with large, pliable bowls; energetic shanks, swelling with new forms;  carved "bridges" and tails that carried flowing lines in astonishingly beautiful new directions.

With these and other briar creations throughout 2006, Toku seemed to demonstrate a new method to his improvisational techniques at the shaping wheel.  It appeared that Toku was now working out radically-new shape ideas by starting with rather "modern" compositions - whose features embraced a kind of minimalist. almost geometric or "simplified" aesthetic. Then he would explore and expand the logic of these shapes, through an almost dialectical process.  After playing around with broad surfaces and sharp angles, he would start softening the forms and teasing out the lines ... and finish his pipe-sequence with a carving of great organic suppleness and elegance.  (The climax of the sharply-etched Manta and Horn would be clay-like, flowing mantas-with-tails that were extraordinarily graceful, clay-like compositions.  See the Chicago Pipe Exhibit of 2007, in the Pipe Show Exhibit section of The Briar Gallery.)