Japanese style Pipes

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.