Bennie Joe Pipes: Handmade Pipes From Jakarta With Hand Tools

Bennie Joe Pipes is the name Prasetya Tri Wibowo, working in Jakarta, gives to his handmade pipes. Wibowo, born in 1991 according to records, studied architecture and spent his early career in that field; he took up pipe making in the late 2010s, in hours freed up by his job, and turned it into a full-time profession in 2020. What sets the brand apart within contemporary artisan production is less its shape repertoire than the workshop's equipment.

A Workshop Without a Lathe

Bennie Joe pipes have no lathe shaping the bowl. The workshop has no lathe, no drill press, no belt sander; the only electric tools are a hand drill and a hand grinder. Apart from drilling the chamber and smoke channel, the entire job is carried out by hand with a file and sandpaper. Wibowo describes this not as a design principle but as the result of woodworking machines being expensive and hard to find in his country.

The visible result of this working method is bowls that don't fit neatly onto a shape chart: the lines are freely measured, and the size difference between two pipes comes from the hand, not the catalog. In this respect the pipes are likened to early-period Danish school work made before the shape repertoire had settled.