Vlasak (Martin's Pipes)

Vlasak is the name given to the pipes of Martin Vlasák, working in the Czech city of Brno; the trade name the master himself uses is Martin's Pipes Bohemia. Born, according to records, in 1962, the master works not in series but with pieces finished one by one. What sets the workshop apart from its Central European counterparts is that the master is known as much for his history in slow-smoking competitions as for his pipe-making.

Formation of the Workshop

Vlasák first took interest in pipes as a smoker, and moved into production during a period when ready-made models did not meet his expectations, carving the briar burls he bought entirely on his own. Dr. Josef Stanislav is cited as the person who guided him in this early period.

Pipe-making stayed a secondary pursuit for a long time; the master's main line of work was furniture manufacturing. Records state that when he was forced to close the furniture business he had run for a quarter century in 2014, he turned his production entirely toward pipes. This background in woodworking helps explain the workshop's emphasis on clean lines and surface.

Material and Formal Approach

The workshop uses briar coming from Italy as raw material. A detail frequently found in Vlasák's work is a silver band used at the joint between the bowl and the mouthpiece; this band serves both as a structural reinforcement and, on plain bodies, as the sole decorative element. It is noted that the master uses a gemstone motif as a stamp on his most prized pieces.

The scale of production is small, and the workshop's known principle is never to make two pipes alike. This approach requires deciding on shape according to the burl's grain in each piece carved individually; the talk, therefore, is not of a catalog of models but of one-of-a-kind pieces.

Competitions and the Brebbia Design

Vlasák is a well-known participant in the slow-smoking tournaments common in Central Europe. In these tournaments, competitors try to smoke a fixed amount of tobacco for as long as possible without letting it go out. In the Czech Republic this tradition has two branches: the national championship, and the tournament held under the name "Bohemia Cup," which also draws participants from neighboring countries. Records state Vlasák won first place twice each in the Bohemia Cup and the Slovak championship, and placed within the top twenty at the world championship.

The workshop's most internationally cited work is the design it prepared in 2003 for the Italian manufacturer Brebbia's Grandi Designers della Pipa series, launched in 1998. In this series, models drawn by well-known makers were produced in limited numbers; Vlasák's name was thus added to a list including figures such as Alberto Paronelli, Rainer Barbi, and Bjarne. The workshop's work has reached various countries, chiefly Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Germany, the United States, and Japan.