Memo Handmade Pipes

Memo Handmade Pipes is the one-person pipe workshop run by Iranian craftsman Mehdi Aghdam under his own nickname. Aghdam came to the bench by way of fields outside pipe making: he worked in painting and photography, made his own hand tools, and did woodworking. The pipe drew his interest because it brought together, in a single object, two opposite ends of that background — a search for a form that pleases the eye and a technical solution grounded in measurement.

The Making of the Master

Since there is no institutionalized pipe-making tradition in Iran, nor an ongoing chain of apprenticeship, Aghdam's training was largely self-directed. According to records, the first two names he followed were Turkey's Kenan Ahmet and the United States' Jeff Gracik; the online accounts and workshop records both masters published were the main support for the trial-and-error process he pursued through the 2010s. In 2019 he turned pipe making into his full-time occupation. The workshop has remained a one-person operation ever since; every stage, from selecting the block to the final finishing of the stem, comes from the same hand.