Posted 5 years ago
Belltown
(241 items)
I've had this little ebony pipe since around 72, when I was in high school. It was purchased at a head shop for $5.50, if memory serves. It was just a wooden blank when I bought it, but my younger sister's boyfriend at the time was trying to get a job doing inlay work at Alembic guitars, so he asked if he could use my pipe to show the folks at Alembic what he could do. Basically, the pipe would be his resume. Materials are mostly abalone (mother of pearl), brass, silver, and a few dots of black epoxy. You can see that his work was not perfect, but it was good enough to get him the job. I got to keep the pipe.
Hey wait a minute it looks freshly used
Beautiful!
I've done inlays (2 banjos) and can really appreciate his skill. Ebony is really hard to do. Even drilling the stem hole would have been tricky.