Sabina Santos (Sabina Pipes)

Sabina Santos is a Portuguese handmade pipe maker who signs her pipes "Sabina." She is recorded as having been born on 20 May 1985 in Tiel, the Netherlands, and has lived in Portugal since the age of three. Working in a craft where women makers are few has contributed to her name becoming known early on.

Coming to the Craft

Santos trained in communications and spent the first years of her working life in finance. She has said herself that she turned to woodworking in search of balance against a desk job; according to the record, this search dates to around 2013. Her husband, a longtime pipe smoker, had a keen interest in the handmade pipe world, and this drew her into the same field. Santos left her job after the birth of her son, and carved her first pipe during this period.

For the following three years she taught herself, learning through trial and error on every pipe. Once she saw the limits of working alone, she traveled to Denmark for training and spent seven weeks there. Fellow Portuguese maker João Reis became her guide there; during this period she also gathered knowledge at the bench from masters such as Tom Eltang, Kai Nielsen, Kurt Balleby and Tao Nielsen. It is said that in her work in Denmark she focused especially on surface treatments, bamboo-shanked bodies and drilling geometry.