Pipe Brands
Kurusu (Reiichi "Ray" Kurusu)
Osaka-based pipe maker Reiichi Kurusu took up the bench after meeting Hiroyuki Tokutomi in 2011, and became known for pipes that blend Japanese craftsmanship with a Danish design vocabulary.
Kurusu is the brand of handmade pipes produced by Japanese pipe maker Reiichi Kurusu under his own name. Known in the West as "Ray," the maker was born in Osaka in 1977 and entered the trade in his thirties at a small bench he set up in his home city.
The brand is not a workshop but a one-man operation: the number of pipes made each year is limited, and both the bowl and the mouthpiece of every piece come from the same hand.
Material and Method
The briar used in the bowls comes exclusively from the Italian supplier Mimmo Romeo; the maker considers sticking to a single source a way of coming to know how that wood behaves. No ready-made mouthpiece blanks are used — every mouthpiece is cut and shaped by hand from rod stock. According to available accounts, the smoke channel is kept wide to give an easy draw; the figure of 4 millimeters rests on a single retailer's information. Secondary materials such as boxwood and bamboo appear frequently in shank bands and decorative elements.
The Road to the Bench
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Source: Pipedia, adapted under the CC BY-SA licence.