One of your favorite carvers in the world, creating your favorite shape; it’s a dream, am I right? But (seriously now) how often does a fantasy live up to reality (that three day weekend with beautiful twins aside)? In my case, Alex Florov is the carver and the shape is the blowfish, and the reality didn’t match the expectations. No sir, it exceeded them.

With this stunning presentation, Alex returns to that marvelous execution of his, wherein a bold center bevel, framed to perfection by painfully beautiful side panels, travels (top and bottom) the entire vertical circumference of the body, meeting up to form a keen edge on the heel. Taking this approach from “Wow!” to “ZOMG!” (yes this pipe just made me channel a 15 year old female), that bevel and edge are compositional lynchpins for the crisp fins that are formed by the dauntingly perfect side panels.

I spoke with Alex at length about this masterpiece. At one point, I felt compelled to ask “I know that a carver isn’t crazy about being asked if an execution was inspired by another artisan, but I see so much of the best of Hiroyuki Tokutomi’s mid-to-late 2000’s fugus in the body, was he…?” Alex, who can rapid-fire answers faster than Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, stopped me short; “Of course, let’s face reality, Toku *is* the modern blowfish!” Indeed.

A skosh over seven inches in length, this blowfish boasts three knuckles of impeccable bamboo, and a bit whose form mirrors those all critical curls on the body. Looking past the fastidious bowl execution (as if that were even vaguely possible) the grain on the dominant plane is flat out gorgeous, only to be (possibly) exceeded by the densely packed birdseye on the irreproachable right panel. Highly recommended? Most definitely, good sir. Most definitely.

Bear Graves