Canaan Pipes

Canaan Pipes is a pipe workshop run single-handedly by Abi Natur in the Adriatic coastal city of Bar, Montenegro. The workshop's founding year does not appear in the records; what makes the brand recognizable is not its history but its way of working.

Production is one-person and small-scale: pieces are taken up one at a time, and the maker does not move to the next until one is finished. According to the maker's own account, he lived for a long time in Europe and around the Mediterranean basin before opening the workshop, and traces of the places he saw later found their way into the shapes he works.

Approach to Making

No molds are used for Canaan pipes. Although a few classic shapes recur in the workshop, since every bowl is shaped individually no two pieces are identical; in this respect the brand is assessed within the freehand tradition.

The workshop sets itself two technical standards. The first is that the freehand-drilled smoke channel must enter the tobacco chamber exactly at its base; the second is that a pipe cleaner must be able to pass from the tip of the stem to the bottom of the chamber without any part being disassembled. A bowl that does not meet both conditions is not offered for sale. The chamber opens as a cone that narrows downward and is finished with hand sanding.

Stems are not bought as ready-made parts; they are hand-cut from rod stock, with the tenon cut from the same piece. The stem materials used are German ebonite alongside cumberland and lucite.