Blog by Dal Stanton

When I saw this pipe on the eBay auction block, I was drawn to it first by the grain.  The dark veins of grain were an anomaly and immediately the questions that came to my mind were, “Is that natural or were the darker veins introduced through the manufacturing processes of GBD?  Or, are they discolorations that came afterwards through aging?  The questions raised my curiosity enough to stand back and look at the pipe itself – a GBD Americana half Bent Billiard.  The grain beyond the dark veins were interesting – one side of the stummel was almost exclusively a pattern of peacock feather eyes – bird’s eye grain, but larger and flowing.  The other side appeared as a tree flowing up from the heal of the stummel and fanning out midway to the rim, with more bird’s eye grain taking the form of the…