Kuan Chien-chung (
Kuan is, by his own reckoning, the only
professional maker of tobacco pipes in Taiwan in the past 300 years and one of a handful of pipe makers in Asia.
PHOTOS: DAVID MOMPHARD, TAIPEI TIMES
"There are two artisans in Japan," says Kuan, whose family name means pipe, "but I'm the only pipe artist in Taiwan. The history of pipe makers is all in Europe and the West -- pipe smoking has traditionally been a Western habit -- but regardless if they're European or Asian, pipe smokers make up their own country."
Kuan is largely self-taught. He graduated with an understanding of woodworking and several of the machines the craft calls for, but they were skills that served him more as a contractor than as an artisan. His expertise on many of the lathes and specialized drills he now uses came from fumbling his way around the equipment, gradually developing not only an understanding of the tools' limitations, but a feel for the materials used in pipe making.
Brier wood is his primary material, which friends help him procure on trips to Europe, but he's also discovered the wood of the Chinese Pistache tree to be suitable for pipes due to its extreme hardness and ability to withstand high temperatures.
His pipe stems (like those of European pipe makers) are cut from a large slab of acrylic resin, then hand-fashioned. The rings are cut from various kinds of antler -- usually deer -- and paired with rings wrought from 1,000-year-old woods found here in Taiwan.
From a block of wood to the finished product, one of Kuan's pipes can take nearly a month to produce. He toils in his workshop from late afternoon until the next morning and sleeps, he says, once every two days.
Kuan breathes life into each pipe long before its eventual owner draws smoke from it. Though he works with a few basic designs, each piece is unique. The pieces of which he's proudest are named and displayed like photos of an extended family. And like family members, they have their own story.
Xuandan (懸膽) is the pride of Kuan's collection. The name literally means "hanging guts," but more poetically implies unresolved courage. It's a knot of black lacquered brier that dangles from an acrylic stem hewn as rough as the brier itself. Between them is a ring of white deer antler that binds the pieces together aesthetically as much as it does literally.
"Taiwanese love democracy, but Chinese live under communist rule," Kuan said. "The bowl of this pipe is comfortable and it feels strong, just like democracy. But, in fact, it hangs precariously from the stem and could break if you're not careful. It reminds us that some things are more fragile than they seem."
Another of Kuan's pipes is even more politically incendiary. Named Lady Liberty's Torch (
Like politics, culture is never far from Kuan's mind. It has shaped him as a person and now, he says, shapes the pipes he makes. He imbues each design with a sense of place and history and hopes that collectors from around the world will eventually see his pieces as unique to Taiwan.
Each pipe is etched with the date it was competed and Kuan's imprimatur that the pipe was made with his own hands. It was once suggested to him that his pipes might be more marketable abroad if he wrote the English word "handmade" on them. It was an idea he scoffed at.
"I'm Chinese. This is Taiwan," he said. "Why would I write English on them? I'm not making souvenirs!"
One of Kuan's pipes can cost anywhere from NT$10,000 to NT$50,000, if he's willing to sell it all. The pieces that are most special to him, like Xuandan, aren't for sale. Instead, Kuan says he would rather give the pipe to a fellow pipe maker from overseas who felt as strongly about it as he does. It would be a way of sharing his passion for the art with the rest of the world. And that, he said, is what is most important to him now.
"There are few pipe lovers in Taiwan," he said. "I want pipe lovers around the world to see my art appreciate it and know where it came from."
Kuan's workshop is located in Kaohsiung's Pier 2 Art District, at No. 1, Tayung Rd., Yencheng District, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. His works can also be seen online at http://kuang-pipe.myweb.hinet.net/.
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50