Xin Li (Xin Pipes)

Xin Li (b. 1980, per records) is a pipe maker working in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province in eastern China. Since 2018 he has run his own Xin Pipes line by himself. His output splits into two branches: plain shapes drawn from English-French classics on one side, and, on the other, experimental work that plays with the angles of familiar forms.

From Real Estate to the Bench

Pipes were not Xin Li's first pursuit. After studying industrial design at the China Academy of Art and art history at the University of Münster in Germany, he began working at a real estate company; handcraft remained a spare-time pursuit. In the small workshop he had set up himself, he mainly made furniture. The birth of his son in 2014 upended this arrangement; there was neither time nor space left for woodworking. Around the same time, a mutual acquaintance introduced him to pipe maker Yang Zhimin. That both had graduated from the same academy made the connection easier, and Yang took Xin Li on as his first apprentice.

Training began at Yang's bench in 2015. Xin Li left the real estate business entirely in 2016 to move into pipemaking full time, and within a short time reached a level where he was also producing for his master's brand, Zhiputang.