HJ-17-003

Valeriy Ryzhenko was born 1964 in Kiev, Ukrain. His grandfather who manufactured the musical instruments showed him how to love the wood and work with it. Valeriy made a wooden bicycle for himself when he was only a child. Later he learned more techniques from his father how to work with woods. He started makeing smoking pipes by the early of 1994. At first he starts to repair the existing pipes, making pipes for the friends and so on, and finally in 2002 he made his first self-taught smoking pipe.

Soon his inspiration grows and he not only carves the smoking pipes but also to create the tampers and cigarette mouthpieces in 2003. He was lucky attending to Kiev pipe smoking club, where he saw the work of other professional pipe makers and start to re-think about his way of carving. His first works were influenced by the his vision to manufacture of Bill Ashton Tayler, Luigi Viprati, Hans Nielsen and Tom Eltang.

Regarding the material he is using mostly the Italian briar and German ebonite for the mouthpieces. Now after 12 years of pipe carving experiences, his works standing in the high quality, new inspiration and ideas and wonderful finish among the pipe makers in the world.