Getz Pipes (Georgi Todorov)

Getz Pipes is a one-man pipe workshop founded and run by Bulgarian designer Georgi Todorov under his own nickname. Working in Sopot, Todorov was for a long time regarded as Bulgaria's only internationally recognized pipe master, since the country has no established pipemaking tradition; he learned pipemaking not under a master but entirely on his own.

From Design to Pipemaking

Todorov's training comes from design, not craft. He began his studies at an art and design school in Kazanlak and continued in the industrial design department of the National Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia, graduating in 1995. Learning silverwork from a friend during his academy years underlies the metal bands and ornamental solutions later seen on his pipes. After graduation he worked for a time as a graphic designer at advertising agencies before settling in Czechia.

His introduction to pipes goes back to the late 1980s, to a cheap factory-made Czech pipe he acquired as a student. The idea of making pipes also matured in that same country, during the four years he spent in Czechia; according to the account, meeting Czech master Karel Hinger at a pipe shop in Prague, and the books he gained access to there, determined this direction. Records give both 1998 and 1999 as the starting date: craft records place the start of his profession in 1998, while in Todorov's own account he considered himself, above all, a pipemaker from the end of 1999.

Approach to Production

At Getz Pipes, production rests not on mass-produced molds but on lines the designer has developed over time. The workshop turns out both fully freehand examples that develop improvisationally on the block and hand-finished pieces that follow classical dimensions. The main material is briar; the materials used for the stem are not detailed in sources, but in general the stem materials common in handmade workshops are involved. Thanks to his knowledge of silverwork, metal details, too, can be worked in-house without being outsourced.

Todorov's industrial design background lends the workshop's formal language a measured order: even in pieces belonging to the freehand family, the proportion between bowl and shank is generally kept controlled. In this respect Getz Pipes sits at the narrowest end of the handmade-versus-machine-made definitional debate, as production run by a single master from start to finish.

A Lone Workshop in Bulgaria

The absence of an institutionalized pipemaking practice in Bulgaria has made Todorov's work both harder and more distinctive: there is neither an established master-apprentice chain nor a local material supply network. For this reason, the workshop has, from the outset, oriented itself abroad, particularly toward the collector circles of Western Europe and North America. Todorov's participation in the master gathering held in the Czech town of Kostelec in 2011 is one example of the workshop's ongoing ties to the Central European pipe scene. His entry into international craft records as Bulgaria's pipemaker is also a consequence of this isolated position. Todorov has stated that the country also lacks a pipe-smoking culture, and that this has made the work difficult from the start.