“Well, it does look kinda cool…you know, the way Sherlock Holmes held his pipes,” exclaims Zulkarnain Saidin with a chuckle, referring to the fictional private detective created by Brit author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose constant companion, aside from Dr Watson, was always his pipes.
According to Doyle’s writings, Holmes smoked three kinds of pipes – a briar pipe, a clay pipe and a cherry-wood pipe. Of these, the briar pipe is no stranger to the former newspaper photographer-turn-artisan, Zulkarnain or Zul, as he’s better known.
“I work with local wood generally but I’ve ordered briar wood from abroad before, via online. But because it’s imported, of course the price is higher,” shares the 51-year-old before adding that he’s always on the look-out for nice vein-like patterns on the wood pieces.
Briar is considered to be the ultimate material when it comes to making pipes. A type of wood harvested from the “heath tree”, it’s highly prized by pipe makers for its high heat tolerance, respiration, hardness and beautiful grain. Pipe smokers, meanwhile, love it because it exhibits a smooth smoke. The wood is expensive because a heath tree has to be at least 40-years-old before its briar is considered ready for harvesting.
“Jom masuk (let’s go in),” suggests Zul, inviting NST photographer Effendy and me to enter his home in a leafy neighbourhood of Ipoh, Perak, to escape the stifling afternoon heat. Roaming lazily around his spacious compound, where bougainvilleas bloom with striking abandon, are his many cats who eye our arrival with curiosity.
The living room is dimly lit, with heavy drapes covering the windows filtering out the light from outside. Despite that, I can still make out an array of interesting looking pipes occupying a cabinet just to the side of one wall. “Duduk lah (do sit down),” says Zul, motioning us to the sofa.
As I make myself comfortable, recorder at the ready, and Fendy prepares his camera, Zul proceeds to arrange a small collection of his pipes, of all manner of design and shapes, on the coffee table in front of him.
One which looks like it has an inbuilt stand (so you can stand the pipe when you’re not using it) catches my attention. That’s different, I muse to myself. Satisfied by the display he has created, the ‘pipe maker’ finally takes his seat, a broad smile on his face. “Okay, what would you like to know?” he asks, as I click my recorder on.
ACCIDENTAL CALLING
“I never learnt how to make pipes. No one in my family made pipes. The person who had any kind of connection with any form of handicraft was probably my father; he used to make furniture whenever there was a demand,’ begins the genial artisan.
His brows furrowing, Zul recalls the incident that steered him onto this creative path. “It was more than four years ago. It was on a “balik kampong” trip to Ayer Tawar, Manjung. I’d stumbled upon an odd looking branch from a Jering tree that was shaped like a pipe. To cut a long story short, after doing some reading and researching on the Internet, I proceeded to carve and smooth the surface, apply shellac and then drill it into shape. I ended up with a usable pipe.”
Expression earnest, he reiterates that he has no idea what compelled him to turn that piece of wood into a tobacco pipe. It just happened, he says. Continuing, Zul recalls that so pleased was he with his first handmade pipe that he decided to take a picture of it and post it on Facebook. At the time, he was still in full time employment with a national newspaper. “I received a lot of compliments from friends,” he remembers, adding that many were surprised to discover that it was actually his handiwork.
A friend suggested that he should pay a visit to someone in Seri Kinta, Ipoh – a pipe maker. “At first, I was a bit shy to go because after all it wasn’t as if I was that good at it. But in the end, I went and spent some time observing how the artisan crafted his pipes. It was so different from how I’d been doing it,” shares Zul.
Sheepishly, he confides that when he started, his tools were so basic. “I had an old saw belonging to my late father and a knife. That guy had so much more!” Acknowledging his limited knowledge, Zul mustered up some courage to ask the pipe maker to make him a student. “Thankfully, he agreed and from then on, almost every day I went to his place to learn, from how to choose the wood, to working with it, to cutting it, shaping it, sanding it – the lot!”
Armed with a better knowledge of the types of local wood that he could work with, Zul had a wider canvas to work with and in turn, was able to develop his craft further. The first thing he did was to expand his ‘repertoire’ of tools. “In terms of local wood, the most suitable would be Kayu Arang Bunga (Diospyros spp), Kayu Penawar Hitam (agarwood), Kayu Kemuning Mas (Murraya paniculata) and Kayu Tunjuk Langit (mahogany), wood that you use to make guitars. These types of wood are ideal because they’re heat resistant.” Zul gets his supply of raw materials from local traders and friends who work in wood factories.
The first time Zul tried his hand at crafting a pipe, it took him about two weeks to complete. These days, he can easily make two in a day - and he’s also proficient at designing and crafting pipe stands. Shares Zul: “One of the most challenging things about making a pipe isn’t so much the design, because a pipe maker is limited only by his imagination, but more about ensuring that the inside of the pipe is balanced.”
A tobacco pipe may seem just like a simple tool from afar, but look closely and you’ll see that it’s made up of many different pieces, each having its own unique purpose. Each piece of the pipe plays an important role in the overall use of the pipe. If just one of these pieces were to be missing, it would drastically affect the quality of the tobacco smoke. It could even prevent the pipe from functioning!
Zul is very particular and exacting when it comes to details, a combination that augurs well for a pipe maker. “The more I do this, the sharper my intuition gets. If I’m making a pipe for someone who likes to clench (their pipe) when they smoke, then I need to make something that’s smaller and doesn’t weigh so much.
As time goes on, I’m able to discern what works and what doesn’t, for the type of smoking experience I want to provide.” At the end of the day, as the famous American pipe-maker Jody Davis said: “Pipe making is basically just solving problems…”
CALL OF THE WOOD
Asked about his early connection with the pipe, Zul confides that he did dabble in pipe-smoking in his 20s, as too his father. But he couldn’t have foreseen that he’d end up making pipes. “I mean, I was a photographer for 27 years. When I started out, it was just a hobby. It helped to while the time away when I had my days off from work. But then I started mixing with pipe enthusiasts and their interest in my pipes spurred me to view pipe-making more seriously. When they started placing orders, I knew that I’d found a new vocation.”
Photography is an art. And so is pipe-making, believes Zul. “As a family, we’re quite creative,” he shares. “My father worked at the Marines Department but he made furniture on the side. I don’t think he learnt the skills from anyone. I guess creativity is just in our family’s genes. All my siblings can draw and my children are artistic too. You just need to nurture and hone.”
Now that he’s no longer in full time employment, Zul, an avid jungle trekker, foresees that his time will be spent going full throttle with his ‘newfound’ passion. “I’ll never get bored poring over wood all day!” says Zul, before adding that these days he’s ‘parked’ at his workstation – in the company of his grinders, saws, hand drill, and chisels - every day from 9am.
“Although I’ve always been a restless soul and enjoy travelling; when I’m working on my pipes, I have no problem staying in one spot for hours. Even my wife can’t get me away from my workstation these days!”
The most that he has charged for one of his pipes is RM650; the cheapest, RM120 – for a pocket pipe, shares Zul, as I gingerly pick up a unique-looking pipe from the table and start studying the details.
As his jovial wife emerges from the kitchen bearing a tray filled with refreshments and insists on having the table cleared, Zul turns to me and confides: “I have plans to open a café – for pipers! Aside from food, I’ll sell my pipes and we’ll reproduce old pipes. Pipe enthusiasts can converge here and use it as their port. Watch the artisan pipe community grow!”
For details: http://fb.me/zulapamacamkawan or call/whatsapp 0146033066
TOBACCO PIPE ORIGINS
The first people to smoke tobacco in pipes are believed to be the Native Americans who lived in the eastern woodlands of North America between 500 BCE and 500 CE. They burned indigenous tobacco in clay or stone platform pipes, so named for their flat bases. Over the next thousand or so years, the bowls of these pipes became more sculptural, frequently carved into the forms of ducks, wolves, and other animals.
The most recognisable Native American pipe is the calumet, a decorated, ceremonial pipe that was smoked to bring rain to parched lands or the wrath of god upon enemies. The peace pipe, whose wooden shank was often decorated with feathers and quillwork, was a type of calumet. What set it apart from other calumets was its bowl, which was carved from a soft, reddish stone now called catlinite, named after 19th-century painter George Catlin.
In the 1500s, European explorers returned home from the New World laden with tobacco and Native American pipes. Initially, pipe makers copied these designs, but pipes quickly evolved into the shapes that we know today. Some of the first European pipes were made out of a type of clay called kaolin, the same mineral potters used to produce fine china. Thousands of pipe makers sprang up in England and Holland. Meanwhile, in 19th-century America, clay pipes were so common and inexpensive that tobacco companies gave them away to customers.
Wood was another favourite material, especially hard woods such as walnut, cherry, rosewood, and maple. But carvers didn’t just use any piece. Before a tree was cut for pipe wood, it’d be drained of its sap, dried for several years, and then boiled or steamed. Germany, Austria, and Hungary became known for their carved, wood pipes, especially for the U-shaped Ulmer and Debrecen styles. Metal caps and chains decorated the pipes, and sometimes antler or bone was used for the shanks.
The Germans too excelled at porcelain pipes, which appeared around the end of the 18th century. Porcelain pipes were initially hand painted, and later covered with transfer-printed scenes of rolling country sides and war-scarred battlefields. Typically, a porcelain pipe’s tobacco bowl detached from the pipe’s base; sometimes the pipe’s wooden shank did, too.
Meerschaum pipes were first carved in Germany. But the material itself, a soft, whitish stone, hailed from Turkey. Meerschaum was prized because the stone absorbed the tars and oils in tobacco, resulting in a smooth smoking experience. By the 19th-century, Vienna was the meerschaum-carving capital of the world. Pipe makers crafted U- and L-shaped pipes with intricately carved shapes ranging from animals and human heads to mermaids and flowers.
The last great pipe material is briarwood, which is made out of the roots of the tree-heath bush that grows along the Mediterranean shore. Briarwood pipes are the most classic and traditional of all pipes. Their shapes have names like pear, billiard, pot, Dublin, bulldog, poker, and prince.
(Source: www.collectorsweekly.com)