Sykes Wilford

A dozen years ago, late summer in 2006, I visited Lars Ivarsson for the first time. We'd met and spoken on a few occasions, but that day we spent hours together, in his workshop, over a fantastic lunch that he and his wife Annette cooked, just talking quietly, smoking our pipes as we looked out from his garden over the fjord that made his home one of the most beautiful places on earth.

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Mies van der Rohe, the famous modernist German-American architect and designer, coined the aphorisms "God is in the details" and "less is more." He was referring primarily to architecture, specifically his famous "skin and bones" approach to building design, but there's no question that he was also referring ... Read More

2016 has been a very strange year. And while that is true of the world outside of pipes as well, it is particularly true of our little hobby. ... Read More

Everything fine, but a bit messy, in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. As of Monday evening, all is back to normal. ... Read More

A few days ago, Ryota Shimizu, Smokingpipes.com's representative in Japan, and I visited Kei Gotoh at his workshop in northwestern Tokyo. Gotoh makes only a few pipes a year, a pattern he's maintained since 1987, the year he stopped ... Read More

On Saturday, March 5th, Luigi Radice celebrated his 77th birthday. I got there late — almost noon — thanks to a localized snowstorm in Varese, where I'd started that morning. Luca Di Piazza, Luigi, and his sons and fellow Radice pipe makers Marzio and Giancluca were all there. ... Read More

Another year has come and gone. While geopolitical woes abound, at least in our little corner, our little world of pipes and pipe tobacco, it has been a good year. The upswell in enthusiasm for all things pipes that we've seen over the past few years continues apace. ... Read More

It's about two in the afternoon on a sunny August day on Funen, the second-largest of Danish islands, as I pull up at Peter Heeschen's farmhouse on the outskirts of Odense. I walk from the rented car into the courtyard created by his house and barns, the paved terrace and flower gardens dappled with sunlight filtered through ... Read More

I first met Kent Rasmussen in 2003. At the time, he'd been making pipes for a few years and had developed a highly distinctive, structured style, bringing an architectural eye to the medium. Kent had a background as a trained sculptor and architect and had worked as a sculptor ... Read More

A month ago, I visited Savinelli for the first time in a few months. Rather jet-lagged, having arrived in Italy the day before from China, I was making small-talk, catching up with Sonia Rivolta, Savinelli's CEO, and Luca Fontana, the export manager, and glancing through the pipes of interest list (which is the appellation I have mentally appended to the document that is perennially presented) that they'd laid out in front of me. ... Read More