Shekita (Konstantin Shekita)

Shekita is the brand of handmade pipes signed under his own name by Ukrainian maker Konstantin Shekita (b. 1967, Kyiv). He is counted as one of the first makers whose name is cited in Ukraine's shift toward regarding pipe making as an individual craft distinct from factory work.

The Path to Craft

Shekita entered the trade not as a pipe enthusiast but as a factory worker. A maker with a background in sports who also worked as a stunt double in film, he started in 1990 at the Golden Gate pipe factory in Kyiv, shaping and polishing mouthpieces; within a few years he had reached the point of producing an entire pipe from design to finishing. In 1997 he began working under his own name, while maintaining his ties to the factory for a while longer.

This trajectory is a legible example of the shift, in the post-Soviet period, of pipe production in the region from large facilities to one-man workshops. He is said to have taken up pipe smoking only after becoming deeply immersed in the craft, doing so, by his own account, to understand what a smoker expects.