Hiroyuki
TOKUTOMI

The most prolific pipe-maker in Japan’s New Wave, Hiroyuki Tokutomi is also one of the most versatile and inventive. Toku’s output includes dozens of new shapes that suggest all manner of new possibilities for pipe design. Toku approaches his shaping wheel like an improvising jazz musician, discovering surprising new lines and forms within each briar block.

A LONG ROAD BACK TO BRIAR

Toku has been fascinated by the creative possibilities of wood carvings ever since he was a teenager in the mid- 1960's.  While studying painting and pottery in Tokyo, he spent his weekends visiting museums and thrilled at the beautiful forms created by sculptors like Takamura Kuon (see the exhibit on the Briar Gallery’s table). He started to dream about expressing himself in a similar way.

As a carver, Toku’s first love was briar and his passion became pipe-making. In 1974, he traveled on his own to Copenhagen and spent three months in the workshop of Sixten Ivarsson. But upon returning to Japan he found it difficult to earn a living making the kind of pipes he wanted. In the 1990's, he had to abandon full-time pipe-making and work first in iron and then in ivory. Though he had considerable success with the latter material, his heart remained with briar and he continued to make pipes in his spare time. Finally, in 2003, he was able to devote himself fully to pipe-carving. The explosion of creativity that followed reflects, I think, the joy he feels at finally being free to explore the expressive possibilities he’s always imagined within the briar pipe.

PIPES AND SCULPTURES

Though Toku continues to make pipes and not carve sculpture, he acknowledges that his fascination with shape can sometimes push his designs into unconventional directions. In my view, Toku’s oeuvre includes a wide range of creations … from organically pliant smoking pipes to dramatic sculptural compositions. Yet in my experience, only once has Toku made a pipe which decisively crosses the line between a smokeable briar and a piece of briar sculpture. (See THE CRAB in this exhibit.)

TOKUTOMI’S INFLUENCE

Tokutomi may have enlarged the canvas upon which briar pipes can be imagined more than any other pipe-maker since Sixten Ivarsson. His (very Japanese) use of asymmetry; his ability to see extraordinary shapes hidden within the flowing briar grain; his instinctive and highly original sense of the beautiful line – all suggest to carvers around the world that a wondrous new expressive potential lies within the familiar briar pipe.