Grechukhin: A Study in Convergent Evolution

May 8, 2015 by Eric Squires in Makers and Artists

Vladimir Grechukin is an artisan I have a difficult time finding another to compare to. The closest, I would say, would be Paolo Becker. Both are pipemakers who were apprenticed in a traditional approach to the craft (Paolo via his father, Vladimir through Fyodorov, the top Russian master of his day), learned an appreciation for traditional qualities (such as craftsmanship and engineering coming first), yet went off to create something not simply modern, but something new - an individual style unconnected to any established school.

For Grechukhin, an important part of that has been not looking at pipes. By that I mean, he doesn't look to them for ideas. His approach to design is instead influenced by the field of design — particularly automotive and industrial, where there have always been those others striving to produce forms and lines that express a clean, smooth, graceful sense of power.

Thus it is that in Grechukhin design, where a similarity is found in relation to certain established pipemaking styles, what we're looking at is a product of convergent evolution. And as in nature while the function of a form may predetermine the most basic aspects of it, the final result can be very different in detail.

View a bat or a bird in flight from sufficient distance, and you might mistake one for the other; spot a Grechukhin in profile from the other end of large enough a room, and you might think it was Danish. Up close in either case, however, there's no mistaking.

While both Grechukhin-school and Danish-school may express an emphasis on smooth and continuous curve, by example, the latter's are most often lithe, occasionally architectural; the former's are a picture of bundled force, or the path followed by a gesture of mass and energy. A Danish transition may lift delicately; a Grechukhin transition drives upwards with easy power, often displayed at the terminus of one of Vladimir's signature shanks, slender and light in cross-section, yet broad and arcing at the flanks.

Check out Vladimir's work below in the gallery player, or visit his product page here.