Talking Pipes with Artisans from NeatPipes The Party 2.0
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Kevin Godbee - Apr 28, 2015
- 10 min read
Lori Brown
During our attendance at Neatpipes The Party 2.0 in Milan, Italy, for which you can read the coverage here, we took some time to talk details with a few pipe makers and one retailer. We started with the well-known artisan, Manduela Riger-Kusk.
Manduela started making pipes 26 years ago. She apprenticed under Poul Ilsted in Svenborg, Denmark for three years and a few months. She then moved to Copenhagen where she sold her pipes out of a store owned by friends. When that store closed she opened her own store and maintained that store for seven years. It wasn’t until about two years ago, however, that she actually considered herself a pro. For a few years she managed props for film and TV producers in Denmark but now she focuses only on pipe making.
I found her pipes quite fascinating with their bright coloring and long shanks. She uses lines as her signature, as well as favoring different color stems such as blues, greens and purples. Her standard diameter air hole is 4mm and she designs it to taper down to 3mm. When she is not using ebonite for stems, she chooses to never use acrylic, but employs a specially formulated synthetic amber instead. Her longest shank she has made is for her own pleasure. It measures 6 – 7" in length. When she makes a pipe for herself she never puts her name on it.
Manduela’s Personal Pipe
The first pipe that interested me was a flat Bulldog Briar pipe. The stem embellishment is made of Boxwood. I was drawn to the double rings carved around the outside of the bowl, the smoothness and design of the briar and the gorgeous khaki coloring of the stem. She is a gorgeous pipe. This pipe is priced at $1,800.
The second pipe I chose was a model with a beautiful Amber colored stem. Most of her pipes are priced at $1,200 and up.
She is extremely charming and a tad shy. While proud of her work, I also found her quite humble. She was very easy to talk to and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting her.
You can see pictured her home in Svenborg, Denmark.
Manduela’s pipes can be found at a few different retailers including The Danish Pipe Shop.
Anne Julie Rasmussen was displaying her work right next to Manduela, and we spoke to her next.
Anne Julie is a world renowned Danish pipe artisan, and what a character she is! Dressed in eclectic vibrant red clothing and beret, one would know, just by looking at her, that she is an artist.
Anne Julie’s first love is art. She is mad about color and loves to create things that bloom. She started early painting, while she lived in Japan. She also loves to paint in Israel and works a lot from there. But above all, she is "mad about Italy"! She has a book of her work that is based on her "ideas of life", as she puts it. She was displaying some of her art along with her pipes.
Her husband was a pipe maker but would never have let her make pipes while he was alive. He died in 1967 and she started making pipes, inspired by her art work, that same year.
This pipe was inspired by a painting pictured in her book titled Remember to Grow Flowers in Your Footprints. This pipe is a great example of her love for vivid colors and blooming wildlife. You can see the footprints on the pipe reflective of the painting.
Towards the end of our discussion and tour of her paintings and pipe making art, we asked Anne what was the average price for one of her pipes. Her response with a laugh, "A lot". Anne-Julie currently lives on an island with a population of only 185 people. It was a total delight to have met Anne-Julie!
Jon Vesterholm
We first met Jon on the Friday afternoon that we arrived at a café near the Fornace Curti, where the pipe show was held. He is a young, up and coming pipe maker who makes traditional as well as freehand style pipes. Jon is very charismatic and passionate about his work. He was a pleasure to meet and talk with.
In 2011, Jon was fortunate enough to meet legendary pipe artisan Hans “Former” Nielsen. aka "Former". He invited him to spend several hours with him as he gave him some insight into his inspiration. Jon also knew the daughter of Jess Chonowitsch and he asked him if he would spend some time with him. Jess told him yes and Jon received some training from his as well.
Prior to the start of his pipe making career and still, Jon has a full time job as a teacher in Cabinetry making. Despite working full time, he still makes about 100 pipes per year, which cost an average of approximately 200 euros each.
Jon loves to try new and different materials in his pipe making. He decided to try working with a resin material for stems. He had to test it for bending since it had never been tried before. He figured out how to bend and not break the resin through trial and error. This is currently the material he uses now. He also makes a material called Sharkwood. Another extremely creative embellishment is his incorporation of vinyl records as material in some of his rings and at the bottom of tampers. Here are some of the pipes that caught my eye.
Dublin/Cutty with a bamboo shank.
Dublin with plateau and a pencil shank with runs about 374 euros.
Dublin Saddle Stem in which he used the resin material for the stem embellishment.
Also shown is a very unusual horn shaped tamper. He uses the material that is cut off during the making of a horn-shaped pipe to make these tampers. They also have a piece of a vinyl record attached the bottom.
I find Jon’s work very crafty and inventive! He has his own website and his work can also be found at The Danish Pipe Shop. He will also do some custom work.
Cristian Galeazzi & Cinzia Evangelis – "Regina Scarlatta"
Regina Scarlatta, which means the Scarlett Queen, was founded by Cristian Galeazzi, following his apprenticeship with Franco Rossi (Il Ceppo). He studied in the traditional Pesaro school of pipe making in which he has refined into his own style to create his brand. Cristian has been making pipes for five years now. Together with his wife Cinzia they created this lovely brand.
You are beautiful in your uncommon elegance,
you fascinate me with your waving charm.
Warm and precious wood, slow burning fire
Will you be my … Scarlet Queen?
(L to R) Lori Brown, Kevin Godbee, Cinzia Evangelis, & Cristian Galeazzi.
(Photo Courtesy of The Pipe Tart)
Cristian gets his wood from Ireland for his Morta pipes. They come as a large block of Bog Oak, which is fossilized and over 3,000 years old. He creates his shapes from the middle of the wood and then works out. The wood is so light that the pipes made from it weigh less than 50 grams. In comparison, a pipe made out of Briar wood weighs about 80 grams.
For his pipes made from Briar wood, he ages the wood for three years and air cures it. He buys this wood from Tuscany. Italian Briar and German Ebonite are used for the stems.
Cristian has developed a grading system of 1 to 6 for his smooth pipes. He only has ever made one pipe that received a 6 rating. The rating is based on the quality of the straight grain and of the smoothness and the perfection of the wood … meaning the presence/absence of sand pits.
I loved the Regina Scarlatta brand so much that I purchased my first pipe ever, by myself, from Cristian. My pipe has a 4 rating only due to two very, very tiny visible sand pits.
He has a higher end brand which can be denoted by a Queen with a star on the pipe shaft. This means it is a "special one".
The passion that exudes from both Cristian and Cinzia is both enchanting and enthralling I loved meeting them and learning about his detailed method of pipe making.
They currently sell the Regina Scarlatta brand direct to consumer from their website – http://www.reginascarlatta.it/ and at pipe shows, but they can also be found in certain pipe shops & webstores. The pipes range in price from 150 euros – 500 euros.
Nikolaj Nielsen – The Danish Pipe Shop
I first met Nikolaj when we went to pick up our welcome packets at the Fornace Curti the first day and then he joined us at the café. Kevin has known him for years, as he has been an advertiser on Pipesmagazine.com for many years. He is charismatic, charming and very passionate about the hobby and his famous shop!
Nikolaj says, "Business is good and remains good". The trend of younger pipe smokers joining the community continues to grow. He said that on average, his store starts off one new pipe smoker a day. They have tailored their business to help the new pipe smoker so that when they leave their shop, they walk out with the entire package: from the right pipe, to a tobacco that they will enjoy as a new smoker, to a tamper, a lighter and all of the cleaning accessories that are necessary. The shop also teaches the new smoker how to light the pipe, keep it lit, smoke it and maintain the health of the pipe with proper cleaning techniques. They feel this is very important as to not lose the new potential pipe smoker to the wrong tobacco, wrong pipe, etc.
Nikolaj also talked about how much the purchasing process has changed over the last five years. He said that five years ago only 1% of their inventory was purchased online. Astoundingly, today, 45% of the shop’s business is conducted online. Because of this, business has grown so much that they have outgrown their current space in Copenhagen. They are located on the corner of a very famous pedestrian only street and much of their success has been because of this location. Because of that, they are being very careful in the search for a new space.
Kevin Godbee (L) & Nikolaj Nielsen from The Danish Pipe Shop
He also discussed how much the in-store purchasing process has changed because of the internet presence online. The majority of the time, Buyers have already studied the pipes online, so that when they walk into the store they say what they want based on the online pipe number. When this first happened they were not sure how to handle it, because they did not have the in-store pipes cataloged as they were in the online store. The shop had to adapt by creating a cross reference between the shop inventory and the online presence of the pipe. With 3,000+ pipes, this was quite a daunting task, but they have now worked through that and Nikolaj said that this is not a complaint because all of these "challenges are positive".
Nikolaj says that some of the guys that come into the store now know more about tobacco than he does. He said that it can be hard to keep up, but again this is a positive. The store is his passion. In business with Tom Eltang, a renowned pipe maker himself, Nikolaj said, "Tom and I want this to be the best pipe shop in the world, maybe not the biggest, but the best!"
It was great to meet all of these wonderful people in Milan, and we are glad we accepted Luca’s invitation to Neatpipes The Party 2.0. Afterwards, we took a week to tour Rome and Venice. Throughout all of Italy, all of the Italian people were extremely friendly and accommodating, and the food was indescribably delicious! We can’t wait to go back!
Note: Small opening photo of three pipes at the top of the article are Cristian Galeazzi’s pipes
Written by Kevin Godbee
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 634! Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Warren Ertle. Warren is an extremely accomplished musician with a PhD in music. He started early as a percussionist in sixth grade. Later his grandmother got him a cheap Casio keyboard which he taught himself to play. He started playing in blues bands in high school, and has been a pianist with jazz big bands for years. Even though he was already a professional musician, he took his first real piano lesson when he enrolled in college with his studies in classical music. He is of course a pipe smoker. At the top of the show we will have an Ask the Tobacco Blender segment with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA.
Soon now, supposedly, our neighborhoods will shift from grinning pumpkins, skeletons in various assortments, and zombies dashing about to pretty reindeer, angels, and flashing lights illuminating homes with sparkling stars and laughing, scurrying Santas. But, lest we forget, there is the turkey season, fancy pie aromas wafting from kitchens, and a national pardon of a big Tom Turkey. Remember, now, that only one of these holiday personalities is a pipe smoker. And that is the hefty, bearded fellow in a bright red suit sitting in a sleigh with a herd of deer hitched up and ready to streak across the globe, bringing tidings of joy and many presents. Ok, the scene is set for the next couple of months, right? So, before we get too far off the beaten path, let’s just take a deep breath of fresh autumn air, shall we? Ahh. That’s better, isn’t it? What’s got the Pundit in a snit is not all the Halloween spooks who came a-jostling for candy. Or the wild turkeys gobbling in the backwoods or all the fuss and feathers over the big one—Christmas. No, it is that we might need to take note of all the little things that mean so much to us. Like a good sunrise (seriously, Pundit has not gone all Pollyanna.) Mayhaps we need to appreciate more of what we have than what we have not. Or something like that. Like, a good pipe in the morning with coffee as the dawn brings us coolish weather now that we have flipped the calendar to autumn. But it also brings beautiful leaves that have become a spectacle of technicolor in the wind. It is the little things. The rereading of an enjoyable book and finding something you did not see or learn in the first go-round. Or a stunning phrase you commit to memory with the re-read, while smoking that favorite pipe. And you notice a superior puff that just seems to be different. It’s in the air and the seasons of meaningful little things. It’s aromatic! Or perhaps it is that sense of satisfaction knowing and appreciating you made it to another day. With the world in a kind of rinse-and-repeat history, reminiscent of a Shakespearean play, it is perhaps a good moment to remember some of Pipedom’s philosophers whose cogent thoughts brought light to clear a path in the mists of confusion and confounding opinions. Ok. No gloom and doom. Just some down-home thoughts. Think of times in the past when history was running off the rails. It took our pipe-smoking thinkers (the mind workers of the world) to speak of better pathways to more light. Think for a moment, with a pipe in hand, these wizards of the world and word: Albert Einstein, J. R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edwin Hubble, Bertrand Russell, C. S. Lewis, and Jean-Paul Sartre. All learned and enlightened. They offered wisdom instead of storms of meaningless roads to nowhere. All while smoking their pipes! Maybe especially with the help of their pipes in the art of thinking and philosophy. Recall the words of Mr. E=MC2 when he said, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” Amen and amen! Dealing with world-rattling events takes a calm and objective view of things, to the Pundit’s way of summing it up. You just don’t go messing around with quantum physics without a calm and objective approach, methinks. Or as the extraordinary physicist Robert Oppenheimer said after he and a team in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Labs developed a way to split atoms into bombs during World War II. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” said Oppenheimer referring to the development of the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. It must be pointed out that Oppenheimer was more of a cigarette smoker than a pipe smoker. Nonetheless, pipes were part of his personality. Now, if you have read some of the great authors of the past and present, their pipes were always nearby. Reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be a three-pipe problem at times. S. Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre require time with your pipes to reflect on the existential problems and solutions these authors provide in learned novels and other narratives. Or take Edwin Hubble and Bertrand Russell, philosophers of another world. Pipes are required for reading. The quantum lode of ideas Pundit is attempting to sort out is that our pipes are relaxing and stimulate our thoughts and creativity. Especially in these last months of the year. Many times Pundit has had that light bulb flick on while smoking my beloved pipes. And friends in Pipedom, it ain’t easy to turn on the lights in Pundit’s rock pit head. Now it’s time for a quote from a Pipe Smoker of the Past. Shelby Foote was born Nov. 17, 1916, in Greenville, Miss., and died June 27, 2005, in Memphis, Tenn. A fact is not a truth until you love it—Shelby Foote. A parting thought: It is said that famed Southern author William Faulkner carried a packed pipe in a coat pocket wherever he went. That’s one effective way to deal with workday conflicts and confusion. A calm and objective judgment in our everyday human affairs, as the quantum man said.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 633. Our featured guest tonight is Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and the accompanying online store. We’ll have JD and Brian talking about what’s new at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, Brian will discuss tobacco growing, what happens to the leaf, and provide updated information on where tobacco is being gown today. Tobacco production originated in the United States and we were once the #1 producer. It’s quite different now.
Well there’s nothing like a touch of the plague to usher in the changing season. Leaving the airport just when the first advertisements for all things pumpkin spice began to appear—lattes, muffins, shampoos, trash bags, and myriad other concoctions—so, too, my ability to breathe freely disappeared. The unfortunate side effect of losing one’s sense of taste and smell for weeks is the utter inability to enjoy tobacco. Not that I consider myself an expert on anything but my own tastes, but be forewarned that this review was made with mildly impugned sensory equipment. Just when a comforting pipe was most needed, its comfort was denied. Be that as it may, the road to recovery found me limping along on one lung this past month, trying to wrest the particulars of two blends on offer from Sutliff: the latest 175th Anniversary blend, Silver Quarter, as well as their spooky seasonal Maple Shadows II. Silver Quarter is a new style on offer from Sutliff, their first coin-cut blend. Naturally a Virginia-Perique, it is enhanced with a traditional core of black Cavendish. In the tin it holds much promise, with a lightly bready and very woody, if ever-so-slightly sour, aroma. After some time acclimating to air, the bouquet softens further and offers hints of the burley with some chocolaty notes wafting through the more dominant dry grassy aspect. The tin art is of a coin-style bas-relief bust, presumably of a founding Sutliff brother, à la The Old Boss On the reverse of the tin we find the blend’s description: Reflecting on Sutliffs 175 years of tobacco excellence, we came across a brand that embodies true value, SILVER QUARTER. This name pays homage to Sutliffs roots, the legacy of two brothers who popularized pipe smoking in the burgeoning mining society of San Francisco. We celebrate this heritage with a coin cut composed of the finest African Virginias, complemented by a core of Perique and Black Cavendish. The tin notes are, forgive the pun, on the nose for a good VaPer blend: mild tart sweetness peeking out from behind dried hay and slight chocolate undertones, with a lightly tannic finish of weathered oak. It is always a joy to prepare a coin cut, my preference being to put a few in my palm and vigorously warm my hands together to fully break them apart. These well-formed discs pack and light easily, and smoke with little prodding to the end of the bowl. For technical points it scores well—it smokes light, and it’s easy to tend the ember. While it gets sharp after a few quick bowls, pacing should be heeded to easily smoke down to the heel without inviting bite. Of the flavor, though, I am left a bit wanting. There are tart and high notes aplenty, but very little of the lemony citrus I would anticipate, as well as scant midtones; they tend more toward the red wine-vinegary and sour. 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With a sweet coffee or tea to accompany, the aftertaste of the maple is reinvigorated on the palate […]
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Vegas Baby The show started out strong on the 14th floor hospitality suites hosted by the Vegas Pipe Show and Smoking Pipes as well as room hopping to carvers, estate sellers, and vendors to pre-game for the festivities. If you’re interested in what that looks like I’ll refer you to last years pipe show round up. I circled with Brian Levine to get the totals in comparison to last year: This year’s show numbers: 108 Exhibitor tables, 445 attendees, 3,250 Raffle Tickets, 100ish dinners, 172 Rooms in the Hotel. Last year, by comparison, 107 exhibitor tables, 425 attendees, 2,200 raffle tickets, 104 dinners, and 175 rooms on Friday and Saturday nights. We were at capacity, basically, when it came to vendor tables and the dinner, so there is no physical room for growth at this point except for attendees. That said, we filled that smoking lounge to the brim. New Carvers Spotlight Garret Woo (Pipes by Woo) How long have you been carving? Garret: I’ve been carving since 2021, and I’m guessing your next question is probably how’d you get started carving? James: Yes. Garret: In 2021 I took a break from my full time job – that included machining and assembly work and I thought maybe it was time I made something that I would like and I started looking at youtube and Instagram and putting together my shop. I did struggle on the stems to start and there was a lot of failure at the beginning. James: How many pipes have you made so far? Garret: I number my pipes, so I just finished up 186. James: What is your favorite shape you’ve been making? Garret: I really dig Canadians and pipes with longer shanks and lovat Canadian blends. I like to play with different shapes of stems on the longer shanked pipes. The billiard would be my go-to shape but I want to learn more techniques on freehanded shapes. I like to put brass and copper adornments on my pipes with my machining background it helps. James: What is the craziest thing you’ve seen at this show? Garret: The first thing that comes to mind is the table over there with C-Pipes with the shapes and the size and petiteness and the intricate details they did. You can check out what Garret is working on by going to his Instagram. Stefan Cashwell James: how long have you been carving? Stefan: about 3 years. James: What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen at the show? Stefan: The Adam Davidson pipe with the clear shape and the bamboo—I don’t know if it’s 3D printed or what, but it’s amazing. James: What’s your favorite shape to do? Stefan: That’s a tough question. I think they’re all the same shape, but what’s fascinating is that Dublin, volcano, and blowfish are all the same depending on how you turn them. Playing with that, with all its variations, is a lot of fun. My favorite accent to use is also horn; it’s finicky, but it’s a great accent on pipes. You can check out Stefan’s work on his Instagram. Science: Meet Pipes I chatted with Chris from the San Diego Pipe Club; he started off doing stem replacements for estate pipes but also improved the airflow. James: How are you doing 3d printing? What is the thought process? Chris: It’s a 3D-printed pipe with a briar insert. The design is a calabash meets a Peterson system meets a metal Falcon/Kirsten radiator style. It is a bottom draft smoking bowl like a radiator like those metal pipes. The inside chamber is a calabash. The stummel and accent rings in the stems are all 3d printed. The insert is briar, olive wood, or I have the potential to use meerschaum as well. This idea came about through the San Diego Pipe Club, wanting to see if we could 3D print a pipe and being curious about the technology; I have a printer and design ability, so here we are. James: What’s the type of plastic you’re using? Chris: It’s all PLA plastic, a renewable potato starch plastic that is food-safe. The stummels are printed with a plastic that has wood in it 40% wood fiber, bamboo, rosewood, ebony, redwood, and walnut are the woods I’m printing. For the accent rings I just got a new material that I’m printing that has 40% copper, so its real metal that you can sand, and polish the same as wood filament. The stems are 3d printed as well. The concept is renewable and cheap from a production standpoint, with the ability to make a very high quality smoking pipe based on the experience. By combining the calabash system pipe and bottom draft hole and using 3d simulations to see airflow, I can see where I’m having eddies and ripples in my current, and see where my moisture and all the particles are dropping back out from a vapor to a liquid. Most people who have tried these say the stems are clean, and they don’t even have to run a pipe cleaner afterward because everything collects at the bottom. Chris has also been experimenting with color-changing plastics so you can see the hotspots. Chris said he was able to use this to slow down his cadence, which, of course, could mean you could get a slow-smoke training pipe to teach yourself to perform better. If you’re interested in learning more or want to check one out, you can contact him on Instagram: Copper Beard Pipe Works The Negative Space The show was buzzing about one specific pipe, which had everyone guessing how it was made. I chatted with Adam Davidson briefly about it. James: How did this idea come to fruition? Adam Davidson: Smokingpipes.com had an expo back in August open to all of the makers they carry. The theme was to make a pipe utilizing bamboo. Given that the last time we had the expo I made a smooth Almond with three bamboo shanks, […]
This is a wonderful presentation and write up!
Thanks for sharing!
Mike
Very, very nice article! Superb writing and pictures. Excellent job!
Thank you for this, especially the Anne Julie part, what a great lady.
Great follow up to the Party 2.0 article, and a nice insight into the latest crop of briar superstars.