Vladimir Grechukhin

Vladimir Grechukhin (the spelling Grechukin is also found in sources) is a Russian pipe maker and designer working in Saint Petersburg. His relationship with pipes began in the 1970s, when he entered the workshop of Aleksey Borisovich Fyodorov (also written Alexei Borisovitch Fyodorov in Latin-script sources) as an apprentice at eighteen. Over a production spanning more than half a century, he has been known both for pipes carrying his own signature and for the PS Studio workshop among whose founders he counted; the community regards him as a continuer of the Saint Petersburg school.

Apprenticeship in the Fyodorov Workshop

By the time Grechukhin reached the bench he already brought a background in drawing and form: he had been attending art school since the age of twelve. His teacher, Fyodorov, is regarded as the pioneer of pipe-making in Russia in the Soviet era. Since briar did not grow in the country at the time and was difficult to bring in from abroad, the workshop mostly worked hard woods such as plane and maple, with briar available only in limited quantity. By his own account he stepped away from pipes for a while in the 1990s to turn toward graphic design, returning to the bench roughly a decade later.

Craftsmanship and Material

In his mature-period pipes, the body is made from briar and the mouthpieces are turned from solid ebonite rod. A detail often cited about his craftsmanship is that the tenon connecting the mouthpiece to the body is turned from the same rod as the mouthpiece rather than being a ready-made factory part; the bit section is thin enough to sit comfortably in the mouth. Among mouthpiece materials, the preference for ebonite is customary among artisan masters of his generation. Materials such as horn, boxwood, or black palm appear as small accents on the body; as surface finish, smooth polish or sandblast is used.

PS Studio and Collaborations

In 2008, together with Sergey Dyomin and Aleksandr Tupitsin, who was twenty-five at the time, he founded the PS Studio workshop in Saint Petersburg; the workshop is referred to among its own members as "The Project." The division of labor is clearly described in records: the designs belong to Grechukhin, and production is carried out under his supervision by two makers. The Danish master Poul Ilsted visited the workshop in the summer of 2012 and gave Tupitsin instruction; Tupitsin went on to produce pipes under his own signature in later years while maintaining his ties to the workshop. Interviews also note that Grechukhin has made joint pipes with foreign masters such as Hiroyuki Tokutomi, Tom Eltang, and Jeff Gracik (J. Alan).

Design Philosophy

Grechukhin calls his own work "pipe realism." The essence of this approach is that a pipe is above all a tool made to be smoked, and that shape should not break away from that function. For this reason he is known to prefer working with measured departures from classic pipe shapes over the large breaks found in freehand. In one interview he describes having developed an arrangement that pulls the chamber back from the center of the body toward the shank; known in the community as "Grech" or "Chopper," this look has mostly been recorded among collector circles.