Leo Pipes (Leon Du Preez)

Leo Pipes is a small-scale pipe workshop South African painter Leon du Preez set up in the early 2000s in the Goodwood suburb of Cape Town. The brand name comes from a shortened form of the maker's name, and the pipes carry the LEO stamp. Production was run single-handedly and stopped entirely with du Preez's early death; for this reason, Leo-signed pipes are counted among the rarer surviving examples today.

The Maker's Path

Du Preez's primary profession was the visual arts. Records show he completed an undergraduate degree via Port Elizabeth Technikon followed by a postgraduate art program, held his first group exhibition at the Ann Bryant Art Gallery in East London, South Africa, and curated that same gallery for years. His early paintings focused on the homeless and the solitary; in later years he turned toward work centered on the ocean. His design-forward approach to pipes is most often traced to this artistic background.

His first encounter with pipes dates to simple experiments with bamboo during his school years. The work became serious around 2001, when he met Johan Slabbert, a retired police detective who made pipes under the Jobert brand. Du Preez soon began working as an apprentice under Slabbert, and the two shared the same working space in Goodwood for years. The maker also set up a second, fully equipped workshop at his own home, which also served as a backup production site for Jobert.