Penkov (Aleksandr Penkov)

Penkov is the handmade pipe bench that Russian pipe maker Aleksandr Penkov signs under his own name. The brand is not a factory or a workshop partnership, but the pursuit of a single person that has, over time, turned into mastery. According to records based on the maker's own account, Penkov was born in Omsk in 1981, studied mathematics at first at Omsk State University, then switched to psychology a few years later.

From Experiment to Bench

The first pipe was made in 2005 and was entirely an experiment: the body was carved from a birch burl, and the mouthpiece (stem) was taken from another pipe. After this first attempt, Penkov tried every material within reach, working even with clay among other materials. As his technique advanced, his choice of material also narrowed, and production settled on briar. Today the maker uses German and Japanese ebonite alongside Italian briar, and occasionally turns to rarer materials as well. The preference for ebonite is a common standard among contemporary handmade pipe benches: hardened rubber is considered more suitable than acrylic for hand-working and for thin mouthpiece cross-sections. In the same way, Italian briar, thanks to the ease of finding long-cured blocks, is the primary source for single-maker benches.

Pipe making remained for a long time a pursuit carried on alongside his main job. Records indicate that the maker has said he once considered moving to full-time pipe making; whether this idea was ever carried out afterward cannot be traced through independent sources.