J. Bonet

J. Bonet is the signature carried by the pipes made by Mallorcan master Joan Bonet i Nadal (1929-2017). He is considered the best-known pipe bench of the Balearic Islands; the community often calls him not by his surname but by the Mallorcan nickname "Bonet de ses pipes." The brand rests on the long life the same man spent both at the bench and at the writing desk: Bonet was a craftsman who wrote as much as he produced, turning the pipe into a subject of Catalan literature.

A Bench Running from Manacor to Palma

The workshop's origin reaches back to the harshest years of the Spanish Civil War. Sebastià Bonet, arrested for membership in Esquerra Republicana following the 1936 military uprising, set up a small workshop with a few fellow prisoners at Manacor Prison during his detention, making handmade pipes. After his release he continued the work outside; production turned into a family business joined by his wife and son.

His son Joan, born in Manacor on 10 November 1929, left school at fourteen to take up the bench, and never left it again. After the family settled in Palma de Mallorca, the workshop found its permanent home in the city's Hostalets district; the master worked there until the end of his life. The work relied on pieces handled individually rather than series manufacture, placing it close to the small-scale Mediterranean branch of pipe making. Among Spanish workshops working briar, Bonet is counted an early link in a thin line of handmade work that later includes benches such as Labuenapipa. According to Pipedia, the pipes' distinguishing mark is an emblem giving the outline of the island of Mallorca.

Pen and Bench

What carried Bonet's name beyond craft circles was writing. In 1975 he translated Joaquim Verdaguer's book on the art of pipe smoking into Catalan; this work set his own pen in motion as well. In the narrative books that followed — Les rondalles de la pipa (1978), ...I fumant en pipa! (1981), and Pipades i vivències (1983) — the pipe is both subject and frame. Las pipas: prontuario de pipología (1978) and La pipa en Baleares (1980) are more reference works in nature; the 2004 book Amb pipa i sense is among the series' late entries. His advocacy for the Catalan language earned the master honorary membership in the Association of Catalan Language Writers.

His Place in the Community, and Afterward

He was a regular participant in international pipe-smoking competitions and served as president of the Spanish Pipe Club; some records list this role as honorary presidency. The work that brought him the most attention, though, was the giant pipe he made in 1982, designed so that a thousand people could smoke from it at once. Both Pipedia and the master's own writing records state that this pipe entered the Guinness Book of Records.

Joan Bonet died in Palma on 12 July 2017. The bench closed with him; what remains are the pipes bearing the island-silhouette stamp and a small number of books that turned the pipe into a literary subject.