Shaabi Pipes

Shaabi Pipes is the pipe workshop Manuel Shaabi opened in Hamburg in 1998 and has run single-handedly from start to finish. In the German handmade pipe scene, its name is associated both with unusual details of its production method and with the fact that its founder came to pipe making from a completely different branch of woodworking.

From Wood to the Pipe

The founder was born in Lebanon in 1950; he entered the trade through an apprenticeship in wood sculpture and furniture craft. In 1979, while the Lebanese Civil War was underway, he moved to Germany and settled in Bavaria, where he both produced one-off furniture pieces and worked on the restoration of old wooden figures in churches and cathedrals. His daughter's asthma was the deciding factor behind the family's move to Hamburg in 1984. These two dates are said to appear consistently across biographies that corroborate each other.

When he struggled to find steady work in Hamburg, he went back to school to complete his professional training. Even though he won awards in furniture work, he came to feel it did not meet his creative expectations, and according to records he gave it up entirely in 1993. He found his new pursuit at the well-established Hamburg firm Dan Pipe: he first did pipe repair, then began carving his own bodies. These years laid the groundwork for his move into independent work in 1998.