Even in her more standard briar pieces, Scottie Piersel's pencil shanked shapes are an impressive feat of skill and patience. Arduous and unforgiving of even the slightest mistake, it's a hard ask to pull off once, let alone to stake your career on it being your signature feature. To then turn around and not only produce one from the ultra-dense, notoriously hard to work with morta, but to make it an extra-long 'Magnum' is nothing short of remarkable. One can only imagine the amount of hours it took to drill an airway — a few millimetres at a time — through the incredibly hard, semi-petrified material.

Her efforts paid off in spades though. Rakish in profile thanks to the streamlined shank and stem, this Stack is made all the more jaunty for a slight forward cant to the incredibly tall bowl — all the better to showcase the excellent display of stacked rings from the uniquely-grained material emanating from the heel. Reinforced with steel all the way through the shank, it's been paired to a vulcanite stem of red-tinged clay hues streaked with tones of inky black, and then accented with pearly Ivorite for a modernist touch.

— Adam M. O'Neill