Kurusu (Reiichi "Ray" Kurusu)

Kurusu is the brand of handmade pipes produced by Japanese pipe maker Reiichi Kurusu under his own name. Known in the West as "Ray," the maker was born in Osaka in 1977 and entered the trade in his thirties at a small bench he set up in his home city. The brand is not a workshop but a one-man operation: the number of pipes made each year is limited, and both the bowl and the mouthpiece of every piece come from the same hand.

Material and Method

The briar used in the bowls comes exclusively from the Italian supplier Mimmo Romeo; the maker considers sticking to a single source a way of coming to know how that wood behaves. No ready-made mouthpiece blanks are used — every mouthpiece is cut and shaped by hand from rod stock. According to available accounts, the smoke channel is kept wide to give an easy draw; the figure of 4 millimeters rests on a single retailer's information. Secondary materials such as boxwood and bamboo appear frequently in shank bands and decorative elements.

The Road to the Bench

Kurusu's first thirty-odd years had nothing to do with pipes; by his own account, they were spent traveling abroad, pursuing music, and working at a tattoo shop before he entered the trade late in life. The turning point came in 2011, when he met Hiroyuki Tokutomi at a pipe gathering in Tokyo. He soon applied to study under the master and, in the years that followed, made regular trips to Tokutomi's bench.

By the maker's own account this apprenticeship lasted roughly two and a half years, with the real progress coming in the final months; this account has not been independently verified. What is certain is that around 2014 his work began drawing the interest of retailers outside Japan, and his pipes started reaching Europe and North America on a regular basis. Kurusu thus came to be counted among the new generation of the Japanese workshop tradition beyond Tsuge.

Design Vocabulary

Kurusu's work sits at the point where Japanese workmanship discipline and Scandinavian free-form sensibility intersect. Among the influences the maker cites, alongside Tokutomi, are Kei'ichi Gotoh, Bo Nordh, Jess Chonowitsch, and the Ivarsson family. This dual heritage reads clearly in the catalog: on one side, bowls faithful to classical dimensions; on the other, free-form bodies shaped by following the direction of the grain. Rounded shapes such as blowfish and acorn are among the forms the maker returns to often. Restraint also stands out in surface work: polished smooth surfaces are left as such wherever the grain shows itself, leaving no need for further decoration.