Piece story · Pappa’s Pipe
What do you do when your father stops smoking pipe?
My father smoked a pipe for as long as I remember. When he finally stopped, his pipes were left on the rack with nowhere to go. I asked if I could have them, and I promised they would not end up in a box.
When your father stops smoking pipe... the only thing to do is... make a nostalgic pipe chandelier!
The rack in the living room
In my parents’ house there was always a pipe rack, and always the smell. Sweet and a little bit smoky, it lived in the curtains, in his jumpers, in the pages of his books. When I was small I thought this is simply how fathers smell.
He had his rituals. He chose a pipe for the day, he filled it slowly with his thumb, and when he was done he tapped it on the edge of the ashtray, always the same little knock. Every pipe had its own shape and its own colour. Some were light like honey, some were almost black from years in his hand. I didn’t know their names, but I always knew which one was his favourite, because it was the one missing from the rack.
The day he stopped
Then one day he stopped smoking. Good for him! We were all very happy about it. But the rack stayed on the shelf, full, and every time I came to visit I looked at it and it looked back at me.
Pipes are not like cigarettes. You don’t just throw them away. They are made of wood, somebody carved each one, and my father held them every day for years. Putting them in the garbage felt wrong, and leaving them on a shelf to collect dust felt even worse. So I asked him if I could take them. He laughed and asked what I will do with a pile of old pipes. I told him I don’t know yet, and this was the truth.
Listening to them
With these pipes it took a while. I laid them out on the bench at the studio, one next to the other, and I just looked. My first thought was a table lamp with one big pipe. But that meant choosing one and leaving the others behind, and on the rack they were always together, like a little family. So they had to stay together.
The rack became the idea. Something that holds all of them at once, but up in the air, and with light. A chandelier! Once I saw it in my head I couldn’t stop seeing it.
A small light where the tobacco used to burn
The frame is brass, of course. One straight brass tube runs down the middle, and thin brass arms go out from it on three levels, like the branches of a small tree. Every pipe sits on its own arm with the bowl turned outwards, so you can see each shape and each colour.
Then the part I love the most. Inside every bowl, exactly where the tobacco used to burn, there is now a tiny light. Fifteen pipes and fifteen little G5.3 LEDs. When you switch it on, the bowls glow again, only this time without the smoke!
Every bowl is a different size and a different depth, so every light needed its own little solution. I wanted the pipes to stay pipes, not to hide them inside a lamp. The whole thing hangs on a brass chain from a dark ceiling cup, mottled like old tortoiseshell, more or less the colour of tobacco.
Each object is unique, which makes me invent and seek new technical solutions in the building process.
“I love you papa”
When it was finished I posted it in my stories, in two slides. The first one asks the question. The second one gives the answer, and under the answer I wrote the only thing that really mattered.
Showing it to him
I was nervous to show him, more nervous than with any customer. It is one thing to make a lamp from a heater I found on the street. This was his.
He looked at it for a long time without saying anything. Then I saw his eyes going from pipe to pipe, and I knew what he was doing. He was looking for his favourite. He found it, of course. He is not a man of big speeches, so he didn’t say very much. But he reached out and touched the bowl, the same way he used to, and for me that was enough.
Some objects carry a person inside them
I think about this chandelier every time someone writes to me about an object from their family. Like the white telephone a lady sold me from her late parents’ house, which she held like a precious doll. These things are more than objects. You don’t want to throw them away, and you don’t want them in a box in the cellar either.
The best thing is to use them again and see them every day. A lamp is perfect for this, because you switch it on every evening. Not every object can become a light, and I will always tell you honestly if yours can. But if it can, I would love to hear its story.
Come with your own nostalgic objects, ideas and dreams that I would love to fulfil.
Pappa’s Pipe
Once her father’s pipes, now a chandelier.
The piece
Pappa’s Pipe
Hanging. Fifteen of her father’s pipes on brass, fifteen G5.3 LEDs. One of one.