Pipe dreams also come true

Kuan Chien-chung (管建忠) used to be a successful contractor and real estate developer. But five years ago he left the business and sold his own house to finance what could be best described as a pipe dream, were it not for the fact that Kuan is already making it come true.

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.

"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 (自由女伸的火炬), it curls up from the smoker's mouth like the outstretched arm of its namesake statue. The shape of the bowl has the same silhouette as the torch she holds. Kaun made it after the US went to war against Iraq and he became troubled that the US would invade a country under the auspices of making it free while risking Taiwan's freedom by placating the neighboring giant that threatens it, China.