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Tokutomi and Teddy:  Imaginative Affinities

The more I came to know Tokutomi’s compositions, the more I appreciated the importance to him of Danish pipe design and his early training with Sixten Ivarsson. In order to better understand the extent to which Tokutomi mixed Danish ideas with Japanese aesthetics, I began looking more closely at a range of Scandinavian carvers, from "the family Ivarsson" to Bo Nordh, from Gert Holbek to Peter Hedegaard. But I found one "Great Dane" in particular whose work appealed to me viscerally in the same way as did Tokutomi’s: Teddy Knudsen. And as I studied pipes by Tokutomi and Teddy, I kept running across imaginative affinities between the two carvers. That is to say, though their pipes may look quite different from each other, I experience surprisingly similar feelings when I engage with them:

• Tokutomi and Teddy pipes frequently make me smile.
• Their carvings convey a sense of suppleness and flexibility in line and shape. The hard briar surfaces often appear soft and yielding ("clay-like" in the case of Tokutomi, "as though the wood were breathing" in the case of Teddy.)
• A Toku or a Teddy pipe is a complete visual composition in which all the elements work together: my eye flows from stem to rim, from button to bowl-bottom, without distractions or false notes. In particular, the mouthpiece is always fully integrated into the pipe’s design.
• Both pipe-makers respond with delicacy and insight to the particularities of the wood block they are carving. Though I always sense the hand of a consummate craftsman shaping and molding the pipe, I also feel that the carver’s imagination is treating the briar with profound respect: the wood appears to be an equal partner in forming the "voice of the pipe."
• The most virtuosic carvings by Toku and Teddy look effortless – spontaneous and inevitable – as though the carvers "just sat down" at their sanders and began to improvise. Yet beneath the lightness of hand and heart lies an intense seriousness of purpose and attention to detail.. Tokutomi and Teddy pipes frequently evoke awe as well as delight.

When I finally met both pipe-makers, I was not surprised to hear Toku and Teddy express a deep admiration for each other’s work. Beyond this general appreciation, though, I think it’s sometimes possible to see specific echoes of shapes or ideas reverberating back and forth between their pipes. I discuss some of these below. But it’s important to recognize that responses by Toku or Teddy to one another will always be much more complex and creative than mere imitation … any more than when two jazz musicians toss an improvisational riff back and forth, they are merely "copying" each other. I’m fascinated by the interplay that I hear occasionally between the pipes of Tokutomi and Teddy, but I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface in my understanding of their creative interactions.

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