Joao Reis pipes
Joao Reis was born in 1978 and grew up in Lisbon the capital of Portugal. When he was young he loved to play with his dad`s tools at home. One of his dads colleagues was a pipe smoker and when he smoked his pipe it just smelled so good and that`s how Joao got acquainted with The Smoking Pipe.
Around the age of 7 he created his first pipe out of a bamboo cane using his dad`s pocket knife and Joao pretended to be Popeye the sailor man. As he grew older, except from wood working, metal working and music, school did not catch his interest, so at the age of fifteen he dropped out of school and started to work on a furniture workshop. Soon after he bought his very first pipe.
In 2007 the American magazine "Pipes and Tobaccos" put his pipes on the front page. And Joao Reis actually celebrated 20 years of pipe making last year (in 2018) and is looking forward to the next 20.
Joao Reis was born in 1978 and grew up in Lisbon the capital of Portugal. When he was young he loved to play with his dad`s tools at home. One of his dads colleagues was a pipe smoker and when he smoked his pipe it just smelled so good and that`s how Joao got acquainted with The Smoking Pipe.
Around the age of 7 he created his first pipe out of a bamboo cane using his dad`s pocket knife and Joao pretended to be Popeye the sailor man. As he grew older, except from wood working, metal working and music, school did not catch his interest, so at the age of fifteen he dropped out of school and started to work on a furniture workshop. Soon after he bought his very first pipe.
In 2007 the American magazine "Pipes and Tobaccos" put his pipes on the front page. And Joao Reis actually celebrated 20 years of pipe making last year (in 2018) and is looking forward to the next 20.
Important teachers and mentors
At twenty years of age my brother talked with a friend of his pipes smoker, about my wood work and pipe interest, his friend asked me to try and make a pipe and so I did. In 1998 his first real pipe was done. The pipe was well accepted and because his brother`s friend was a member of the Portuguese pipe club, he invited Joao to a club meeting to show the pipe to other club members. They liked the pipe too so Joao got a few orders and became a member of the club.
In 2003 at the world championship of slow pipe smoking competition in Barcelona, he meet Kai Nielsen and asked if he could come to Denmark to learn from him. Soon after I was in Denmark learning from Kai Nielsen and later Poul Ilsted and other pipe makers.