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All Pipes Considered: Jeff Gracik and Ping Zhan
On this special episode of All Pipes Considered, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Jeff Gracik of J. Alan Pipes and Ping Zhan to discuss the two carvers' latest collaboration sets. Four years in the making, these amazing sets represent not only the artisans' influences and signature style, but their longstanding friendship as well. Each set comes with its own special tamper, made by Jeff, as well as a beautiful leather traveling case crafted by Claudio Albieri featuring detachable magnetic pipe rests that transform the functional bag into a beautiful pipe display.
Note: The following transcription has been edited for clarity and brevity.
[Shane Ireland]: So today I have Ping Zhan and Jeff Gracik here, two guys that we've represented for a number of years now, especially Jeff. He's been with us for the majority of our 20 years in business, and Ping is joining us too all the way from China. Thank you both for joining us today. The reason that I wanted to talk to you guys is because you recently wrapped up a collaboration project that's been ongoing for quite some time?
[Jeff Gracik]: Yeah, yeah. We started this project in 2016. So it's been a few years. Good work takes time.
[SI]: Of course, you can't rush these things. So what you guys ended up doing is working jointly on a handful of sets, right?
[JG]: That's right. The original idea actually came from the building of Ping's and my relationship together. And I proposed that he and I work on a collaboration together, which kind of blossomed into three sets. The vision was to sell them in both the Chinese market and American market to demonstrate to pipe fans everywhere the relationships that pipe makers have with one another. I think that's one of the benefits of doing these kinds of collaborations. Just to say, hey, we're not just like a localized market or a domestic market, but there are real relationships, real friendships that develop across the globe.
[Ping Zhan]: Yeah, exactly. I remember the first time I talked to Jeff was 2014 when a friend of mine was pipe shopping in Beijing. So she knew that I wanted to meet Jeff, but I'd never had the opportunity. So she just gave the phone to Jeff and we actually had a little chat. And so next year in 2015, Jeff invited me to his seminar, held in Jeff's workshop. It's the pipe making seminar by the sea. So I went to Jeff's workshop and I learned so much. There was so much information, and that benefited myself quite a bit. And we became closer and closer, as well From that point, I visited Jeff several more times, and two or three of those times we were working on these pipe sets.
[JG]: Yeah. I think we began the set in 2016. I think Ping came over in November of 2016? It was right around the time of the West Coast Pipe Show. And one the pipe sets, actually two of them, were started from the same block. Those are always special sets. The Blowfish set, the cross cut set that Smokingpipes has, originally started that way. But unfortunately, nature didn't agree with us. So they ended up being split up, and another block had to be introduced to one of the pipes, but that happens from time to time.
[SI]: Yeah, that happens with briar a lot, I imagine. I was going to say, though, Jeff, you've worked in collaboration before with other pipe makers, right? Can you tell us a little bit about some of the other projects that you've done?
[JG]: Yeah. Gosh. You know, the first collaboration I ever did was with my friend, Brad Pohlmann up in Oregon; we did a Blowfish set together. I think it was 2005 or 2006. And our friend Adam Davidson, who works for Smokingpipes, actually made the stand for us, which was very cool. That set was the first of many. Cornelius Mänz, I believe, was the second person I did a set with. And Cornelius has been a friend and mentor of mine for many years. I visited him in gosh, the last time was probably six, seven years ago and we worked on a cross cut set together. And what was cool about that set was that I was reflecting some of the design ideas that I had borrowed from him. I learned on that trip, though, that he had borrowed some things from me, too. That blew my mind. Wow, Cornelius is borrowing an idea from me. I never conceived of people borrowing things from me, always that I was borrowing from other people.
[JG]: That experience really kind of taught me about the reciprocity of the relationships that we have: That ideas aren't stagnant or shouldn't be stagnant, and that good ideas can be developed and borrowed and exploited and made into something different than what it started out as. That's the process of design evolution. And it's exciting to see that happen. So I've worked with Cornelius. I've worked countless times with Vladimir Grechukhin in St. Petersburg. In fact, Smokingpipes has represented a number of those collaboration pipes over the years.
[JG]: Now I will say working with Vladimir has always been a blast, but we joke that he has no English and I have no Russian, so we both speak broken German together. But working with Ping, the difference would be that we Ping speaks English so well that it makes it a lot easier for us to communicate about some of the ideas that we want to express where we want the set to go. It's easy to discuss the vision for the whole thing and bring it together. Sometimes it can be a little challenging to arrive at those conclusions together; there might be one maker driving the project more than the other, but I really felt like we both contributed equally to the design of the pipes themselves.
[SI]: Yeah, absolutely. So what about you Ping? Was this your first collaboration on this scale? Or did you work on some stuff in the interim while this was being fleshed out fully?
[PZ]: Yeah. This is the first time I've collaborated in this way. We both contributed to the set almost equally; I think Jeff chipped in more, because of all the hard work with the case. Initially, when I went to Jeff's workshop in November 2016, I stayed seven or eight days in Jeff's workshop. Every day we just got together and made pipes and exchanged ideas. That was just wonderful to me. We were speaking the same language, the language of pipes. To be able to exchange those ideas so fluently that just blew my mind. And, also, Jeff has so many interesting ideas about pipes and also techniques; I think I learned a lot, from the 2015 trip and also the 2016 trip. Of course, San Diego's good weather and good food were awesome, too.
[JG]: What Ping isn't sharing with you is that I got to go to Dali and visit him in China as well. And he got to reciprocate the hospitality. And we worked on this set there as well. So we really worked on it in both places. In fact, I think I even finished and stamped one of the pipes when I was in Dali.
[SI]: Real quick on that note, though. So were the pieces pretty much mostly worked on when you guys were both in the same shop, first in California and then in China? Or did you do some of the work independently or exchanged the pieces through the mail or that kind of thing?
[JG]: Apart from some refining details, it was almost entirely in person.
[PZ]: We would basically do the shaping and major crafting of the pipes in our shops, when we got together. We did the finishing, the staining, polishing part of the stem, those things separately. But most of the work was done while we shared the workshop together. I think it's a very complete collaboration.
[SI]: So we were fortunate enough to get two of the sets. We have the Acorns with Bamboo and we have the Fugus. What was the shape for the third set?
[JG]: The third set were small Bent Balls with teardrop shanks and a line running up the side.
[SI]: Okay, perfect. So, now that our viewers at least know the ideas behind the three sets, can you tell us how you guys landed on those themes?
[PZ]: It took a long time actually. Jeff mentioned the one set, the Blowfish. Basically, we picked up a big block — a tall block, I should say — that we thought we can separate in the middle in order to make two, cross cut Blowfish. So we started that way. We separated the one block and tried to make two Blowfish, all from the same block. But unfortunately my part of it was not really usable, so I started a new one.
[JG]: It was a learning opportunity.
[SI]: Yeah, briar does that a lot, the learning part. So the other thing I'm curious about is influence. Because I'm familiar with both of your work so far, I can guess that there's three specific influences across these sets as well. Was any of it intended to be homage or was it mostly just that these are the kinds of shapes that you both are fluent in and both of you like to explore?
[JG]: Yeah I don't think any of it was intentionally meant to be a reference to an influence. But I think that, naturally, that happens. Like we spoke earlier, how I was surprised by the reciprocity of influence, similarly, we can't help but be influenced by the people who have inspired us. And so I think it naturally flows. So we have the bamboo pipe, which is very much in kind of the Jess Chonowitsch / Sixteen Ivarsson school. And then the contrast blast, that comes from Jody Davis, who was a big influence on me. Then in the Fugu set, of course, we have our Japanese friends, especially Hiroyuki Tokutomi, who I know Ping studied with multiple times as well. The bent Ball shape was inspired by Lars Ivarsson. And because it has a boxwood cap on it. But, of course, all of them are filtered through so many other different influences as well, whether it's the German school, some of the Italian, some of the other Japanese pipe makers. So because it's difficult to really isolate, we tend to focus our discussion on the big names.
[SI]: Sure, yeah, I really appreciate these sets specifically, and this sort of collaboration in general. There's collaborating where two carvers work on the same exact pipe and trade ideas that way, and you end up with sort of an amalgamation of both of their styles. But it's really interesting to see these sets, because even though there's a central theme to each of them, the difference in the subtleties between both of your approaches are really evident. Like I didn't have to pick up and look at the stamps to be able to see which was Jeff's Acorn and which was Ping's Acorn. And I really enjoyed that. I really enjoy seeing those slight differences, because that's what makes these things interesting. It's the variety; anybody can reproduce, note for note, a cover of a song, or print a new copy of a picture. But it's far more interesting to see the differences; even though you're both sharing ideas and sharing techniques, you still come out with a fundamentally different product.
[JG]: Yeah. You want to hear that famous cover song by one of your favorite musicians, not from the cover band down the street, because you want to get introduced to it, right?
[SI]: Yeah, exactly. The best argument is cover songs, to use that analogy. The best covers are the ones that have a little bit of a different spin on them. It's not just a note for note copy.
[JG]: Yeah. Weezer's Toto cover. And, we were talking about the relationship and the influences. Ping and I have discovered through the years that we share a lot of other things in common as well, things that have helped to not only influence the pipes, but just influence our time together and help build our relationship. So Ping and I both love good food and Ping has introduced me to some fascinating food that I would have tried nowhere else. And I hope I've introduced him to similar things, but he's introduced me to some fantastic music, too. For the viewers of your program who you don't know, I'm a huge music listener. And he's introduced me to some of the bands that I listen to regularly now, and that's always fun to be introduced to new people.
[PZ]: Yeah, I remember there was a time when you sent me a message that you were going to one of the band's concerts, too. I was so jealous, man.
[SI]: Yup. So with sets like this, it's pretty common to see a pipe stand or a wooden box, some sort of nice presentation box. We see those things often with sets like this. I'm curious to hear more about the packaging that you guys chose.Can you speak to the presentation part of this and sort of the thought that went into that and how that was developed?
[JG]: Sure. After Ping and I had conceived of the pipes and had mostly made them, I took it upon myself to manage the creation of the bags. We wanted to work with someone who we both had a relationship with as well. And so we chose our friend, Claudio Albieri in Italy. Claudio has made the bags for Ping's pipes for years, and he's just a great guy. We've traveled with him all over the world, and it's great to be able to introduce another friend to a collaboration to make it like a true collaboration. In the past, I've had local craftsmen make the boxes for me, but I wanted to have someone in the pipe community make this for us. One of the things that's been really important to my pipe making throughout my entire career has been the functional aspect of pipes. I never wanted to make pipes that were going to sit on a shelf and be there for display. I wanted pipes that, even if you were comfortable displaying them, and thought they were pieces of art, they were also eminently smokable.
[JG]: So we wanted to have that functional aspect evident in the packaging of the pipes as well. When I spoke with Claudio, I told him about that. I didn't want to just have a bag so that it was something that the pipes would be hidden in, but I wanted to have something that they could also be displayed with. And so we started batting around ideas and had multiple iterations and ended up with,I think, just a wonderful little package. It is the perfect size to carry around, but it also has these display pouches that can sit on the top of the bag and and display the pipes for you. So it met both of those categories, and I couldn't be happier with the way that this came out.
[SI]: I also just love the sort of symbolic piece of it; it's sort of representative of the project itself: Ping traveling first to California, multiple times, and then Jeff traveling to China and also the travel that you guys have done with Claudio. There are three distinct parts of the world that are very important to pipe making represented here. And I love the idea that it's not just a beautiful wood stand. It is something that sort of facilitates the idea that, physically and in spirit, this is a hobby and a craft that brings us all together.
[JG]: Right? Yeah. I'm glad that it captured that for you, because that's really what we wanted to bring to the project.
[SI]: Absolutely, absolutely. So guys, real quick, thanks again for joining us. And before we sign off here, I did want to give you an opportunity to chime in again if there's something else that you'd like to say to the viewers, the collectors, the pipe smokers of the world. Anything else about this project or your work in general that you think they should know?
[PZ]: Okay. Thank you for having me, Shane. It's been a great opportunity to talk to you guys. For the pipe collectors, thank you for all your support, all these years. Right now, it is a very special time, so keep safe and healthy. And keep smoking a pipe.
[JG]: Yeah, I think I would reiterate all of Ping's points, but in addition, we're glad that so many of you have joined us and other pipe makers around the world, in our journeys, and have become part of that journey. We're grateful for all of your support through the years. And to the two lucky customers who end up with these sets, we are so thankful that you appreciate them enough to add them to your collection.
[SI]: Well said, well said. Thanks, guys, again for joining us. Thanks to everybody out there for watching and we'll see you next time.
Tagged in: all pipes considered Interview J. Alan Ping Zhan Pipe Makers Pipe Making Video
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