Matzhold (Peter Matzhold)

Matzhold is the handmade pipe brand Austrian master Peter Matzhold (b. 1952) signs with his own name. Production is carried out in a one-man workshop set up in the countryside north of Graz, in the southeastern Austrian state of Styria, and is limited to a few hundred pieces a year. At this scale, the brand belongs not to factory production but to the side of pipes made by a single master's hand.

From Architecture to the Pipe Bench

Matzhold's first profession was architecture; he completed his studies in Graz and worked in the field for a few years. He also tried his hand at carving pipes during those years, without commercial intent, for pieces he intended to use himself. According to the account, the turning point was meeting a gallery owner in Basel and exhibiting his pipes there; after this exhibition he gave up architecture and turned to the bench. According to the record, he has worked as a full-time pipe maker since 1978. He did not learn the craft under a master but progressed on his own through a long period of trial and error; his name first became known within Austrian and German pipe circles.