Cornelius Mänz

Cornelius Mänz is a pipe maker who works alone in Reutlingen, in southwestern Germany. His name became known in pipe circles in 2001, when he first introduced the pipes he had made to a wider audience; in the years since, he has become one of the few German workshops regularly represented at international pipe gatherings. Output is kept deliberately low; his name is associated not with a series but with individually signed pieces.

The Road to the Workshop

Mänz did not come to pipe making through a professional track but first as a consumer: he is known to have smoked a pipe since the age of eighteen. The first part of his working life was spent in textile design and graphic arts; on his thirtieth birthday, while on holiday in a small Danish village, he came across a pipe workshop, an encounter that set him on the path to building his own bench. He trained without apprenticing under any master, researching materials and tools on his own; after several years of preparation he put his first pipes up for sale. His background in design is frequently cited as the main reason for the sense of proportion and control of line often noted in his shapes.