Do you see a ‘Japanese style’ in pipe making? Or are we heading for some kind of world standard overriding the regional differences that used to make life exciting?
Without question, I see Japanese styling in Japanese pipes. Tokutomi is the most obvious example of this. Though he does make occasional Danish-style pipes, his pipes are Japanese, not Danish. Satou is the same way, but it’s not quite so easy to spot. Satou’s pipes are minimalist and while his shapes are generally simpler, I would even argue that he draws from Danes to a lesser degree than Tokutomi.
Tokutomi overlays Japanese styling on fundamentally Danish forms in many cases – the blowfish shape provides a springboard for much of his experimentation, for example. Satou starts from less developed premises – he talks of the ‘essential’ nature of a pipe as opposed to an existing stylistic set – and yields pipes that are very Japanese, but far less obviously so.
Tsuge is more Danish in styling. I think this is by design. Their goal was to compete with the high grade Danes both in the domestic Japanese market and overseas. However, from time to time, one sees a Tsuge that is extremely Japanese. I recently saw a series of pipes from 1992 and 1993 from Tsuge that were inspired by the traditional Japanese pipe, the Kiseru. This project was abandoned after just a handful of the pipes were made, but it certainly indicates that the Japanese aesthetic tradition plays a role for Tsuge’s pipes, also. It must be remembered that Tsuge is most targeted at its home market and the Japanese don’t seem to want Japanese pipes; they want Danish or English or Italian pipes;at least from what I can discern from Japanese pipe shops and from speaking to Japanese collectors.
Trying to define an American style is more difficult. Of course, given the regional and cultural diversity in the US, this is hardly surprising. To a much greater degree than any other country, there really isn’t an American aesthetic that one can point to. Some makers, like Todd Johnson and Jody Davis, are very Danish in their styling. Mike Lindner draws on both English and Danish pipes for inspiration – and creates pipes that aren’t obviously from either tradition. Trever Talbert is almost impossible to qualify. Seriously, how does one fit his Halloween pipes into an artistic tradition, except perhaps that of H. P. Lovecraft or Alfred Hitchcock?
I think JT Cooke or Lee Erck might strike some non-Americans as more American in their aesthetic, but I’m not sure that’s the case. Certainly, Lee has an American backwoods-wilderness aspect to his pipes, but how is that more American than, say, the cosmopolitan cultural outlook of Charleston or New York or Chicago? Indeed, to confuse things further, how does one qualify Walt Cannoy’s aesthetic as particularly American? ‘Disturbed’ might be a better appellation for his style – something Walt would relish.
Japan is generally known as an Internet-savvy country. Why are these artisans not attempting to market their pipes directly, as many US carvers would?
Just as in other countries, it depends on the maker. Tokutomi-san is very focused on just making pipes – 175 or 200 pipes a year represent long hours, six or seven days a week. Further, he speaks only Japanese and purchased his first computer just last year. Certainly, from an economic division of labour perspective, it makes the most sense for him to sell pipes to those who specialize in selling pipes.
Satou sells some direct to good customers and friends, but he’s semi-retired now, so volume and sales numbers are hardly what he’s chasing. At this point, Smokingpipes.com is Satou-san’s only retailer; he doesn’t currently sell to retailers in Japan.
Fukashiro-san’s brother markets his pipes for him in Japan. At six or seven hundred pipes a year, it would be quite a task to both make and sell that many pipes. Further, his brother owns the second largest pipe distributor in Japan (representing Stanwell among others), so this is an obvious choice for him.
Tsutomu Fukashiro is the one I know least well. His Tsutomu pipe brand is widely known and respected in Japan and he’s far more prolific than Satou or Tokutomi, making a few hundred pipes a year – perhaps somewhat more than 600. Our relationship with him is newer (as of September 2003), so I don’t yet have a complete sense of his style, nor a sense of his success in the United States. Certainly, his work is much more directly Danish than the other two carvers. His pipes cover a much broader price spectrum, from about $250 to $900, with the less expensive pipes predominating. Though he makes high-grade pipes, his methods, prices and production volume are more similar to that of, say, Kai Nielsen than of Jess Chonowitsch or S. Bang or Lars Ivarsson. I hesitate to make cross-country comparisons of makers (it’s usually not really correct and often results in angry e-mail from various corners of the globe), but the comparisons can be made from a methods and production standpoint, though not from an aesthetic or quality standpoint. It’s too early to gauge his success in the US market, but we have high hopes.
For decades, Tsuge was the only producer of Japanese pipes widely known to smokers outside Japan. But F. Sykes Wilford of Smokingpipes.com is convinced that the international pipe community should be looking at Japan a bit harder. In an interview offering detailed insights into the global pipe business, Sykes tell us what’s special about the Japanese.
You’re making an obvious effort to introduce Japanese pipes to the rest of the smoking world. What’s customer response been like?
FSW: Customer response has been extraordinary – far beyond what I would have imagined when we began working on the possibility of importing Japanese pipes almost two years ago. But before I talk about the makers, I do want to say that we’ve received enormous help from Barnabas Suzuki in making all of this possible. Suzuki-san is one of the truly great pipe historians in the world today and has a great love for pipes from all countries. To not mention his gracious and ongoing assistance in connecting with these pipe carvers would be a terrible oversight.
Currently, we represent three Japanese pipe carvers in the US aside from Tsuge.
Hiroyuki Tokutomi’s work is brilliantly designed and beautifully engineered. From the perspective of aesthetics and artistry, I’d put him up there with the top three to four pipe carvers in the world. He has a truly extraordinary ability to reinterpret traditional Danish, German or English shapes in very original and very Japanese ways. He’s been compared to the late George Nakashima, a celebrated Japanese-American furniture designer who came to typify Zen Moderne as an artistic movement.
Tokutomi-san spent a year in Denmark, studying with Sixten Ivarsson in the mid-1970s. Certainly, Tokutomi-san’s work is an outgrowth of Danish pipe styling, but he’s overlaid a clearly Japanese artistic and cultural tradition upon that framework. Without this becoming a treatise on Tokutomi-san’s place in the great Japanese artistic tradition, I’ll simply say that I think Tokutomi’s pipes have significant artistic merit, even outside of the pipe collecting community. We currently sell about 175 Tokutomi pipes a year at prices between $400 and $1700 per pipe; almost all are in the $550 to $1000 range. The collectors are delighted with the pipes, as evidenced both by their vocal enthusiasm and by the fact that we sell as many as Tokutomi-san can make. Tokutomi, for the first time in his thirty-year career as a pipe maker, is producing at capacity and making great money doing something he loves.
Of course, it’s been a great success for us also. Further, it’s been very personally rewarding for me – I feel very lucky to be able to handle Tokutomi pipes. Tokutomi is probably the only make of pipes that causes the whole company to stop what we’re doing when they arrive, and spend an hour gawking at and fondling fifteen pipes. Now I just have to figure out how to sell fewer so I have a shot at one, once in a while!
In the part of Lombardy north of Milan– Como, Cucciago, Varese– is the other center of Italian pipe making and the second hotbed of pipe development during the 1960s and 1970s. Though much of it can be traced to the Castello factory in Cucciago, influence and history of pipe making in this region is more widely distributed and indirect than in Pesaro. Certainly, Carlo Scotti’s Castello deserves the reputation it has for being the first maker of upper-end, high-grade pipes in the region, beginning in 1947. Further, both Luigi Radice and Pepino Ascorti started their careers with Castello in the 1950s. They later (1969) formed Caminetto, which is now run by Roberto Ascorti, son of Pepino. Luigi Radice created the Radice brand in 1980 and parted ways with Pepino. The second piece of the story lies with Brebbia and Savinelli. The Brebbia factory (or rather the factory that later became the Brebbia factory) was founded by Achille Savinelli and Enea Buzzi, originally to supply pipes to the Savinelli shop in Milan. Later (in the early 1950s), Savinelli opened its own factory and the Brebbia name was adopted. Brebbia and Savinelli are different from every other maker mentioned herein in that their culture is that of a factory, not a workshop. Brebbia produces about 40,000 pipes annually, whereas, for comparison, Radice and his two sons produce less than 2000 pipes annually, usually between 1500 and 1800. Brebbia’s focus has always been manufacturing efficiency– being able to bring a great pipe to the market at a reasonable price– over small scale artisanship. The other great pipemaker in northern Italy also started as a factory: Ardor, perhaps somewhat influenced by the success of Castello, moved their production from machine made, mass-produced pipes to meticulously crafted, hand-made pipes during the 1960s under Angelo and Dorelio Rovera.
Indeed, Giancarlo Guidi argues that this is the great difference between the pipe making culture in the Como region versus that in Pesaro. He argues that the Pesaro tradition has always been one of small craftsmen, while the tradition to the north is one of manufacturing. While he is correct in saying that the origins of Ardor, Brebbia, Savinelli and, to a lesser degree, Castello are manufacturing oriented, the hand made pipes coming from the likes of Luigi Radice, Roberto Ascorti (Caminetto) and Dorelio Rovera ( Ardor) suggests that this is certainly not the case today.
This region’s style is certainly not as cohesively definable as that of Pesaro. For example, in the case of Radice, there are considerable elements that are traceable to Castello and Caminetto, but much of the shaping seems to have also been influenced by the Pesaro school. Ardor has a style that is very difficult to trace to another tradition. It is also difficult to quantify, except to say that it is exceptionally inventive and often whimsical. While their pipes are clearly recognizable as Italian, the Roveras have such a style of their own that it is nearly impossible to trace a stylistic lineage. As for Castello and Caminetto, there is a focus on traditional, strong shapes with clean lines. Savinelli and Brebbia are both imbued with a manufacturing mentality that is necessary given the way they make pipes. High-end pipes from both companies (such as Autographs from Savinelli) combine vestiges of this mentality (in terms of simple, well defined, robust forms) with the rigorous focus on hand made perfection espoused by Castello and Caminetto.
Though Italian pipes and pipe making deserve a far more exhaustive analysis than can be provided here, I hoped this served as an interesting introduction into the great world of Italian pipes.
It’s tough not to love Italian pipes. Whether from Pesaro or the area around Como, north of Milan, Italian pipe makers have a sense of flair and elegance that sets them apart in the pipemaking world. This update spans those two major Italian pipe making regions, with Ser Jacopo and Rinaldo from Pesaro and Ardor, Radice and Brebbia all from near Como. Though there is a neoclassical streak in almost all Italian pipes, there are considerable stylistic differences between the two regions.
The Pesaro style, or school, is most closely associated with Mastro de Paja and Ser Jacopo and the man behind both companies– Giancarlo Guidi, who currently runs Ser Jacopo, but previously headed up the pipemaking team at Mastro de Paja. According to Guidi and others, the Pesaro school was created in the 1960s and 1970s by small groups of local craftsmen who then splintered off into the various brands. The cross-pollination of ideas generated during the early years established the Pesaro school and that exchange of ideas continues today. Il Ceppo and Mastro de Paja are the oldest brands from the area that still make pipes, with Guidi splitting off from Mastro de Paja in 1982 to found Ser Jacopo. Georgio Imperatori, who founded Il Ceppo, worked with Giancarlo Guidi in the very early Pesaro school days, before Guidi founded Mastro de Paja. Similarly, Bruto Sordini of Don Carlos got his start under Guidi at Mastro de Paja. Many of the newer Italian brands, such as Rinaldo and L’Anatra, also have close ties to one of the older companies.
The Pesaro School is most traditionally neoclassical. Essentially, that means that they took classic English shapes– Billiards, Dublins, Bulldogs etc– and recreated them in new and interesting ways. Shapes are in many cases determined by the grain– certainly not to the degree that many Danish, German and American pipes are– but unlike most English pipes (especially in years past), the Pesaro school certainly considers grain in the making of their pipes. Looking back at the beginning of the 21st Century, this seems almost obvious. However, in the 1960s, neither the Italian pipe renaissance, nor the Danish revolution spurred by Sixten Ivarsson and Preben Holm, had yet come to pass. Until then, while attractive grain was considered positive, if it happened, it happened by accident. One need only look at Dunhills, GBDs, Barlings, Comoys and other great English pipes from the 1950s and before to see this. Combining this regard for traditional shapes with a concern for grain, one begins to understand the Pesaro pipe. Other influences are involved also, though. For lack of a better descriptor, Pesaro pipes look Italian. English pipes reflect British culture to a great degree, perhaps best articulated by traditional, refined elegance. Italian pipes, like Italian cars, are thematically more modern and more chic in their elegance.
To maintain the vehicular analogy for a moment, Italian, and especially Pesaro, pipes are to English pipes as 1960s Ferraris are to 1960s Rolls Royces. Both are of high-quality, but they are entirely different in terms of design and conception. Pesaro school pipes, both as a further explanation of their ‘Italian-ness’ and as an adjunct to it, also have an architectural flair that focuses on clean lines and holistically and cohesively designed shapes. Clearly, discussion and assessment of the Pesaro style, be it from an artistic or a craft perspective, is far from simple.
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