Michail Kyriazanos

Michail Kyriazanos is a Greek pipe master working on Paros, one of the Cyclades islands in the Aegean. He was born in Athens in 1989; apart from the five years he spent at university, he has lived his life on Paros, where his workshop is also located. His name is occasionally spelled "Michael" in sources; the everyday Greek form of the name is Michalis. In the workshop's early years his pipes carried the Archaggelos mark, before he later switched to his own name.

Founding of the Workshop

Kyriazanos began making pipes at the end of 2010, at the age of twenty-one. By his own account, the first pipe he made was a saddle-stemmed Dublin; the first piece he considered sellable was his third pipe. By his own measure, the real turning point was his thirteenth pipe, which he says set the direction of his subsequent work in terms of shape and finish.

His preparation for the craft dates back to childhood: he grew accustomed to working with hand tools from an early age, spent two years during his school years making wooden stands and furniture for sound systems, and from age fifteen spent his summers with a marble sculptor on Paros. Compulsory military service in Greece lasts nine to twelve months for young men; according to records, Kyriazanos fulfilled this obligation in the Greek navy. He considers his relationship with the Greek masters Chris Asteriou and Kostas Gourvelos, along with the knowledge he gained through maker forums, decisive to his progress.

Material and Craftsmanship

Stem work is the workshop's best-known feature. Stems are hand-cut and, as a rule, made of ebonite (vulcanite); acrylic comes into play only in details such as rings, or by special customer request. The tenon that fits the stem into the shank is not a ready-made delrin piece but a projection turned from the stem's own body; this method, common in old English workshops, is kept up today by only a small number of masters. Bore sizes are also fixed: the smoke channel is four millimeters in the bowl and three millimeters in the stem, and to soften the step between the two sizes, a short four-millimeter conical transition is drilled at the mouth of the stem.

On the wood side, there is only one choice: the workshop uses only Greek briar, sourcing its blocks from two separate briar suppliers. According to the master, the wood from one of these sources has been cured for eight to twenty-seven years and is hard and dense; deep-pore sandblast surfaces are difficult to achieve because of this hardness. The other source's wood, cured for two to four years, is softer and lighter in color, and is aged for one more year in the workshop before being worked.

Formal Approach and Mark

The symbol in Kyriazanos's mark is a contemporary interpretation of the marble figurines first made in the Cyclades around 3300 BC. These figurines are considered among the earliest examples of deliberate simplicity; the master says he chose the symbol as a counterpart to the priority of function and the avoidance of unnecessary ornament.

The same approach also determines his shape repertoire. Mostly classic English shapes and their measured contemporary interpretations come out of the workshop; the master's own pipes are also predominantly in billiard and bulldog shapes. Among the makers he admires, he cites Paolo Becker for combining classic shape with contemporary design. With his solo output and his working method outside a fixed catalog, Kyriazanos is considered within the definition of the artisan pipe.