Keresaspa (Saeed Nazarli)

Keresaspa is the name under which Saeed Nazarli (b. 1991), who works in Tehran, signs his pipes; the maker himself is also known by this name within the community. The scale is small: records put the workshop's output at around thirty pipes a year. Nazarli's wife also makes pipes, under the name Atin.

A Self-Built Workshop

Nazarli took up pipe smoking in 2010 and soon became a keen reader and researcher on the subject. He was among the founders of the Iran Pipe Club, wrote articles on pipes and tobacco for the club, and, according to records, served as its president from 2012 to 2018. His education began in chemical engineering and continued in architecture; before turning to pipes he also spent a period apprenticed to a luthier.

His decision to make his own pipes grew out of a combination of interest in handcrafted work and curiosity about where such work departed from factory production. 2015 was spent gathering materials and finding a workshop where he could rent a lathe for a few hours a week; the first pipe was finished the following year. No single master trained him: magazines, books, online forums, maker interviews, and production videos were his only school. These were the years when domestically handcrafted briar pipes were only just being introduced in the country; the first pipe from the Pasargadtabac workshop had also been shown in autumn 2015.

Between Measurement and Form

Since the early pipes were made for his own use, the opportunity arose to pair a single bowl with several different stems and weigh the difference himself. The diameter of the smoke channel, the taper of the funnel, and, when needed, redrilling the bowl were all tried one by one to find which combination drew better. It is said that he considers the stem the pipe's most critical part, spending days on that single piece alone until he gets the result he wants. To broaden the data available for comparison, he is also recorded as having asked buyers who owned pipes by well-known masters for those pipes' measurements.

On the form side, two separate paths are followed. When taking on a classic shape, every detail is settled from the outset, leaving no room for deviation in execution; within the community, the shapes best known are also accepted as the hardest to execute flawlessly. In freehand work the order is reversed: once the bowl has roughly emerged, direction is read from the briar's grain and the cues given by additions such as bamboo. Among the sources of inspiration he cites, masters of the Danish school and of Japanese pipe making come first; yet he retains his loyalty to the classic English-French repertoire, particularly the unadorned functionality of the billiard. Achaemenid columns are said to have influenced the shape and flared ends of some of his stems. Records indicate he was invited to contribute design work for Guo Hui Zhang's GH Zhang brand in 2024.

Materials and Ornamentation

Bowls are briar, stems are German ebonite; when they come his way, old bakelite or natural amber are also worked. Having previously worked with meerschaum and bog oak, the maker has concentrated on briar in recent years. Various types of bamboo and horn are used for shank extensions. The decorative repertoire is broad: mammoth ivory, mother-of-pearl, amber, bone, and exotic woods. He does his own metalwork, including layered pieces made with the Japanese mokume-gane technique.

Name, Tiers, and Year Stamp

The name Keresaspa comes from a mythological hero mentioned in the Avesta and known in Persian as Gerşasp; the Avestan word is explained as meaning "having lean horses." The same framing carries through into how the pipes are presented. The tiers are named after gods and symbols of the ancient Near East: at the top, reserved solely for flawless, evenly grained smooth surfaces, is Orb of Ishtar; next, which also covers superior sandblasts, is Orb of Shamash; and at the bottom, covering standard sandblasts and rustics, is Orb of Seen. For the handful of pieces considered unusual, the name Keresaspa and the Azi-Dahak is set aside.

The stamp consists of a four-digit year followed by a serial number. The year is written not by the Gregorian calendar but by ancient Iran's Mihr (Mithra) solar calendar, in which 2023 corresponds to 7761. So the four digits in the stamp may at first glance seem meaningless to a reader unfamiliar with this distinction.