Martin Romijn

Martin Romijn is a pipe maker working in Leerdam, on the river Linge in the Netherlands' Utrecht province, who comes from a background in stonework. Born in 1969, he first encountered pipes at twenty, in 1989; he did not begin making his own pipes until 2016. He carries on production alone in the workshop at his home; this scale is the customary arrangement for one-man workshops.

A Trade Born of Stone

After finishing school he served four years in the Dutch Marine Corps; after leaving the service he worked in security and at a motorcycle shop. When the shop went bankrupt he was forced to find a new trade and turned to stonecutting and carving; according to the record, this work remained his main livelihood for nearly thirty years. He produced work across a range running from gravestones to door and window sills, from kitchen counters to bathroom and fireplace cladding; alongside the old methods carried out with hammer and chisel, he also learned decorative carving. In choosing stone he favors Belgian hard stone and Jura stone, both of which he likes for their fossils and crystals. Marble, granite, onyx, and petrified wood have also passed through his bench.

Accessory production began after an injury: knee surgery following a torn cruciate ligament kept him out of work for about a year. In this gap he turned leftover stone scraps from the workshop into tobacco tampers, shared his first examples on the pipe newsgroups of the day, and set up his own website for these pieces in 2003. Production later expanded to ashtrays and magnetic pipe stands that create the illusion of the body floating in the air. By the time a progressive condition that made walking difficult rendered the physical burden of stonework impossible to bear, he had over a decade of accessory-making behind him.