The Anglo-Hellenic Renaissance

August 5, 2015 by Eric Squires in Makers and Artists

"Greece and classic are very close as you already know," says Chris Asteriou. Hellenic, Hellenistic, Greco-Roman; if one were so crass as to throw a stone in a museum exhibit on the classical world, it would be hard to make it not hit something either Greek or influenced by Greeks. You could try throwing it at the floor, I suppose, unless said floor had some kind of tile pattern or mosaic on it — that would probably turn out to be Greek in origins too.

Asteriou wasn't boasting, however, he was leading to a point: in Greece they tend to be steeped in classic. Art, architecture, literature, the course selections of universities — all are weighed towards the classic.

So, he explains, it would only be natural for his generation of Greek pipemakers to look to the classic. That, in this matter, the definition of classic for once doesn't connect back to Greeks doesn't appear to matter. Chris doesn't even mention it. English pipe shapes define pipe-classicism, so he refers to what's been going on with his fellow young Greek artisans in terms that fit: an English pipe renaissance. Thus we find the reason behind what, to those of us outside of Greece, seemed like a hell of a coincidence — namely how one after another Chris Asteriou, Michail Kyriazanos, and Konstantinos Anastasopoulos came to the wider pipe-world's attention as young Greek artisans who were all thoroughly grounded in perfecting classic English shapes, despite no apparent connection between any of them. They had no common mentor. They hadn't even heard of each other, until all the rest of us started hearing about them. The connection, as it turns out, was hiding in plain sight. The connection was that they were all Hellenes.

That said, it is important to note that the aforementioned grounded-ness in the classics hasn't meant classic shapes were or are the limit for these artisans. The English shapes are the groundwork. It is by working to perfect their skills at creating these shapes that Chris, Michail, and Konstantinos develop what they need to create a great, say, Devil Anse, or Danish-neoclassical bamboo Dublin, or even an organic Acorn featuring the type of balanced asymmetry pioneered in pipemaking by Hiroyuki Tokutomi.

Proportions, lines, proper engineering — studying and creating the classics teaches these three, just as, evidently, being Greek taught these three artisans the importance of the classic itself.