(Photo by Gary Birnie)
There's something beautiful hidden
within that piece of briar or meerschaum or corn or clay that you are
holding. Beyond the external beauty, beyond the physical properties
that allow it to turn dried leaves into mystical experiences, beyond
the hard work that went into its formation, there is something
bigger, yet invisible. That pipe represents a form of global unity
rarely found today. You are holding proof that man can come together
out of love, out of a shared passion.
(Photo by "psd")
If I am sounding a bit transcendental,
cut me some slack, since I have spent the last four years of my life
studying religion, philosophy, and literature (hurray for a
liberal arts degree!). If you give me a bit of leeway, I hope I can
illuminate what I find so amazing about the pipe.
When I picked up my first pipe, not
even four full years ago, I knew nothing about the differences
between given schools of pipe making, nor did I have any conception
of the history of the wondrous object that I had just purchased. I
just knew that I put tobacco in the hole, lit it on fire, and puffed,
and even that I did not fully understand.
Once I started to widen my gaze and do
a little research, I saw some of the most beautiful works of art I
had ever seen. The first one that made my jaw drop was shown to me by
my older brother, Tommy, who I had also brought along with me in my
exploration of pipes.
Sitting at home, puffing contently on my Neerup apple, I saw a message pop up on my computer from my
brother, reading something like: “You
think your pipe is pretty? Look at this!”
(Photo Courtesy of Smokingpipes)
To say that I
thought that this pipe, carved by Kei'Ichi Gotoh, was magic is an
understatement. I was expecting a jinni to slither out of the pipe at
any moment. Fascinated, and disappointed by the red SOLD OUT next to
every pipe made by Gotoh, I looked for other Japanese carvers, to see
if there was any similarity between this carver and his countrymen.
The pipes I found
were organic and breathtaking, their curves flowing more naturally
and more perfectly than a super-model's. Since then, I have learned
that this is one of the signature qualities of the Japanese carvers:
natural, organic shapes that push the boundaries of the pipe-making
world, while simultaneously showing respect to the traditional form.
This is it,
I remember thinking to myself. These are the top of the
line pipes.
While there are
those out there who would agree with this assessment, the Japanese
style is but one jewel in the crown of pipes.
My
piping education continued. I eventually discovered more online
resources beyond the retailers, including A Passion for
Pipes, the revered blog of Neill
Archer Roan.
(Image: Neill Archer Roan, © 2008 Neill Archer Roan, All Rights Reserved)
My very first visit to this website brought me
face-to-face with an Eskimo, by Tom Eltang. At the time, I was
unfamiliar with both the shape and the carver, so, like a good little
student, I did my research.
With a few
keystrokes, I discovered that Mr. Eltang is a contemporary artisan
based out of Copenhagen. I may be American, and thus horrible at
geography, but I knew enough to know that meant he was from Denmark.
My curiosity piqued, not least of all because I found it intriguing
that a Danish man would make a shape called an Eskimo, I determined
to find out about other Danish carvers.
(Photo by Ashtyn Renee)
To this day, it is a mystery to me how
I went a single day in the pipe world without stumbling onto the
wealth of information concerning the Danish pipe-makers. Images of
stunning caliber flashed across my screen, filling my hard-drive and
my mind with shapes unbeknownst to me previously. These shapes came
equipped with titles like tulip, bent egg, elephant's foot, blowfish,
and, most commonly, freehand.
(Photo by slynndesign)
Had I been a more casual collector, I
may have paused for a moment to admire the stunning prowess of these
carvers and then been on my jolly way. Instead, I dug deeper. Soon, I
found out how much I owed to the Danes.
Back in the late 50s, a man by the
name of Sixten Ivarsson – a name now on the same level to me as
Michael Jordan and Jimi Hendrix – did something practically unheard
of: he left the bark on the top of a bowl he was forming, rather than
removing it, as the classic doctrine dictated he should. This simple
decision led to the creation of what we now know as freehands.
Before this innovation by Mr.
Ivarsson, pipes looked mostly like what are today called classic
shapes: billiards, dublins, princes, maybe a bulldog or zulu or two.
The undisputed master of the classic shape was, and is still widely
thought to be, England.
(Photo by David Salafia)
Ashton, Barling, Comoy, oh my! ABC,
one, two, three, you've got three incredible companies who have been
putting out reliable, handsome pipes for years. Beloved by many,
revered by some, these pipe markers have stayed close to shore and
have not adventured as far as others in terms of shape innovation.
However, when you know how to do something pretty close to perfectly,
why change?
Don't worry, I haven't forgotten the
biggest English name of them all, the big-daddy, the Goliath of
pipes: Dunhill. The name itself is still enough to send shivers down
the backs of some pipe collectors – in a good way!
During its time, the Dunhill company
has helped to reshape the pipe world, creating some new shapes and
transforming the meaning of a quality pipe. When Alfred Dunhill
opened his first tobacco shop in 1906, he found the quality of pipes
coming in from France to be below his required quality level: he saw
fills and did not seem to think the pipes smoked as well as they
could.
Like a true entrepreneur, Alfred
Dunhill set out to fix the problem himself, opening a small factory
that followed a simple motto: the best briar at the right price. The
rest is history.
Dunhill and the rest of the English
pipe-makers have ever since enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for
producing handsome, elegant pipes of high quality. They were the
undisputed gold standard of pipes, and still probably would be if it
were not for little man in Copenhagen by the name of Sixten.
The Danish artisans did not rest on
their laurels, however, and have since continued to innovate and
create some of the most popular and exotic shapes available today,
using some of the highest quality briar available in the world. I
actually discovered that a lot of those Japanese carvers whose work I
had fallen in love with had studied with some of the great artisans
of Denmark, including Sixten and Lars Ivarsson and Jess Chonowitsch.
Okay,
I said to myself, I was a little hasty in my conclusion
before. This is really the top of the line, the best of the best.
I was so convinced
by the superiority of the Danish pipes that I messaged Neill Archer
Roan, since his website was the springboard for this whole
investigation, to ask him his opinion as to whose work I should focus
on in the Danish market.
Helpful as always,
he directed me to several of his favorite artisans. He then said
something that caught me totally off guard: “Have you looked into
Russian carvers?”
What?
(Photo by Marc Veraart)
How many different
countries could possibly produce great pipes? Sure enough, I did my
research and was once again wildly impressed. In fact, Russia has
recently become my country of focus in terms of pipes. The Russian
artisans show a vast awareness of the organic possibilities within a
pipe, as well as the simple beauty of the classic forms, and are not
afraid to mold the two worlds into one piece of art, creating
something new and yet, at the same time, timeless.
The pure talent
coming from everywhere in the world is mind-boggling: Turkey is home
to the master Meerschaum carvers, who come the closest to making
actual sculptures of their pipes; American carvers are some of the
world's rising stars when it comes to pipes, reinventing the notion
of sandblasting and turning it into an art-form of its own; German
artisans seem to have taken the best of both worlds from Japan and
Denmark and turned it into something new and heart-stopping.
The list simply
does not end. Every country bears its particular perspective on pipes
and brings something unique to the table. While each is unique, none
is an island (even though some of the carvers literally live on
island). Every tradition relies on another and somehow, despite
physical, ideological, and language barriers, they all come together
to form something beautiful: the pipe.
