Ershov

Ershov is a one-man clay pipe workshop named after ceramicist Vladimir Ershov, who works in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. The workshop's renown comes not from series production but from the effort to reconstruct the shape language of clay pipes made centuries ago in the Don basin and in Anatolia. In this respect Ershov's work is considered as much an archaeological reconstruction attempt as a craft.

A Return to the Clay Pipe

The master's name is associated with a decision he made in 1980: that year he abandoned free ceramic experimentation and devoted his entire effort to making 17th-century Anatolian-derived clay pipes. By the time the last masters carrying the tradition had died, the clay-body composition, mold-taking, and ornamentation details had also largely gone unrecorded; Ershov tried to fill the missing links by studying period pieces in museum storerooms and through his own experimentation. It is said that he also made some of the tools he worked with by hand himself.

He did not reach this point through a formal craft education. He was born in 1949 in Voronezh, the son of a naval officer; his youth passed through a string of disparate jobs across different cities, from milling to construction work, from archaeological excavation digging to stage design. When he returned to Rostov-on-Don in 1975 he came into contact with ceramics, and according to the record worked as a ceramicist at the city's applied arts workshop. He is said to have produced more than three thousand clay pipes between 1980 and 2014; he is reported to have begun stamping his own mark on his pieces in 1995.

Shape Language

The principal source of shape for Ershov's work is the Balkan-Anatolian type red clay pipes brought to light in excavations around ancient Tanais, roughly thirty kilometers west of Rostov. This family is considered to sit at the northeastern edge of the same broad tradition as Tophane pipemaking. The type's scheme is simple: bowl and shank body are shaped from a single piece of clay, a wooden or reed mouthpiece is fitted afterward, and the surface is decorated with fine motifs opened with a pen point. Rather than copying this scheme exactly, the master reconstructs it with his own proportions. The material's relationship with fire is discussed in the clay pipe entry, while the general framework of the tradition is covered in A Brief History of Clay Pipes.

Exhibitions and Collections

Ershov's pieces began appearing in applied arts exhibitions from 1979 onward. Exhibitions on record include a Balkan folk art exhibition in Volos, Greece; an all-Union applied arts exhibition held in Leningrad in December 1990; and an international trade and industry fair in Marseille in 1994. Among museum collections, the museums of Rostov-on-Don, Novocherkassk, and Taganrog, along with the Museum of Applied Arts and the National Museum in Prague, and an art gallery in Ito, Japan, hold his work; his pieces are also said to be found in private collections in Europe, North America, Israel, and Australia. Today the master works to order for museums and collectors.