Vesz Pipes (Julius Vesz)

Vesz Pipes is a pipe workshop founded in Toronto by the Hungarian-born master Julius Vesz and run single-handedly for more than fifty years. It is regarded as one of Canada's longest-running handmade pipe signatures; it made its name both through its small production volume and through its claim of using briar blocks that had remained underground for a very long time, referred to as "dead root."

From Hungary to Toronto

Julius Vesz was born in a small town southwest of Budapest. There was a craft tradition in the family: his grandfather was a master who made and repaired pipes, and is said to have worked for prominent families of Austria-Hungary. The grandfather died when his grandson was nine; even so, the bench he saw in childhood became the starting point Vesz returned to much later when he chose his profession.

He emigrated to Canada in 1957 at the age of twenty-three. His first job in Toronto was as a machine draftsman, but the desire to work for himself won out. Records state he completed his first pipe in 1959. During this period he is said to have approached Charlie Dollack, who ran a repair workshop in the city center, and to have found encouragement there, though he received no formal training; he built his technical knowledge through his own experimentation. The repair work he ran on a modest bench at home gradually turned into production, and he began making pipes for several major stores as well as for United Cigar. In later years his workshop operated out of a shop on the lobby floor of the Royal York Hotel in downtown Toronto.