From my point of view - though there are certainly a number of very influential pipe artisans out there - few have had such a big impact as has Todd Johnson. Though Todd is not making pipes currently, when he was making pipes, he was - in many ways - a real phenom - an artisan's artisan. As is the case with Jody Davis, quite a few other pipe makers came to Todd's shop to learn from him.

While people like Jeff Gracik (who also spent considerable time with Jody Davis) Brad Pohlmann, and Adam Davidson were all spending time learning from Todd Johnson, Johnson was spending time learning from artisans like Hiroyuki Tokutumi. You only need to look at the pipes Todd was producing during and after his time with Tokutumi to see a profound influence in both shape vocabulary, composition, and in reading the briar. Johnson - as has been his wont because he is an extremely generous personality - passed along his advancements as he was making them. So we see Tokutumi's use of "ma space," organic line, plateau surfaces, and deliberate asymmetry and mirroring of dimensions at different angles passed to Todd Johnson, through Todd Johnson, and on through others. There is literally a cascade of aesthetic influences.

Further, Tokutumi’s influence on Todd Johson’s work has also included other artisans who Tokutumi influenced, like Ke’ichi Gotoh who was also mentored by Tokutumi. Bear Graves and Sykes Wilford in an essay about a Johnson creation, “Inuit,” describe a cascade of influences brilliantly in this excerpt from an essay on the Smokingpipes.com site:

Left: Inuit by Todd Johnson

Todd isn't the first pipe maker to explore the ideas presented by mimicking the forms of aquatic creatures. Kei'ichi Gotoh did so with his Sio Yaki (bamboo or other material piercing both body and tail of the pipe) series of pipes and Teddy, contemporaneously, did so with his Whale and Seal theme (focusing more on the animal). Indeed, Lars' fish shape of decades ago, now a standard Danish-Japanese-American high grade theme, was aquatically inspired. So, where does this piece, which by any measure is extraordinary, fit into this pantheon of pipes inspired by Poseidon's creatures?

If we consider this composition both synthesizing and, in other respects, departing from the respective styles of Teddy and Gotoh, then we're getting close to understanding it. While possessing some of the organic predilections of his mentor Tokutomi, Gotoh is a structuralist, architectural designer of pipes. His pipes, while exhibiting some organic elements, are formal compositions-- the will of the maker is visible in the creation. And yet, because of his Japanese artistic roots, he maintains an inherently Eastern sense of visual balance. So, we have Gotoh's Sio-Yaki, which combines a structured approach to design with a Japanese approach to symmetry and asymmetry, plus, at the same time, right around the world in Denmark, Teddy was playing with an entire series of shapes based on aquatic forms. True to his Western-Modernist aesthetic roots, these pieces were more formal and more abstract than Gotoh's.

So in looking at the above pieces, we can clearly see the artistic antecedents for the Inuit. Todd combines the pliability of the Teddy with the overarching structure of the Gotoh. We can see this in little ways. Todd seems to employ negative space (around the tail, especially) in much the same way Gotoh, or, for that matter, Tokutomi would. Yet, he still has a distinctly Western approach to the combination of various textures-- the way the plateau base is handled in combination with the smooth portions of the bowl exemplifies this.

Left: Sio Yaki by Ke’ichi Gotoh

Similarly, Ke’ichi Gotoh’s design innovation of piercing briar with bamboo also inspired Alexey Florov, who adapted the idea but applied it to his own shape vocabulary that is inspired by a love of flowers. Florov attributes the inspiration for his “Calla Lily Pierced by the Artist’s Brush” as having come directly from the bamboo pierced Gotoh work that also influenced Todd Johnson.

Here we see Gotoh’s strikingly memorable design innovation being adopted by two different artisans — Johnson and Florov — and then incorporated into different design aesthetics and two different shape vocabularies: aquatic creatures and flowers. There is similarity in that both artisans use the idea in an organic shape context and bamboo pierces briar with both pieces, but the similarity ends there. The tools that each artisan uses to create their work cannot help but drive the shape vocabulary. Johnson’s use of the sanding wheel make his shapes convex. And because Florov carves with chisels, his shape combines both convex and concave surfaces.

Below: Calla Lily Pierced by the Artist’s Brush by Alex Florov

What is magical is that each artisan sees and works differently. Each has their own concept of beauty and balance. So we see these influences moving along and through a sequence of people and aesthetic filters. Initially the work is derivative; it cannot help but be so. But as each artisan comes to feel comfortable with new shapes and strategies these things become their own and we begin to see divergence from the original influence. The original moves in one direction and what has emerged from it shifts shapes and becomes something different.

What makes American artists and artisans interesting - and hopefully keeps them from becoming stagnant - is the American openness toward diverse influences. North Americans are essentially fusing styles and themes from different parts of Europe, Japan, and from other North American artists. Jeff Gracik is another powerful example of how American artisans innovate through fusion, then transformation.

Below: Jeff Gracik’s Reclining Mesa

When I look at these pipes by artisan Jeff Gracik, I can see Tokutumi’s upstream influences, especially in the organic upward thrust and ebony base of the piece called “Reclining Mesa” (an approach to cavalier design that Tokutumi literally reinvented). I also see how Gracik has adapted and transformed these upstream influences. Gracik’s work may derive from Tokutumi’s influence, but his use of another natural shape - the mesa -  creates a counterpoint between that which is inorganic in nature and that which is alive. The tension between “the mountain and the tree” is nothing short of awe-inspiring. It is as if the tree is summoning movement from the mountain while the mountain is infusing strength into the trunk of the tree.

Left: Cavalier and Blowfish by Hiroyuki Tokutumi

Compare the Gracik blowfish at the top of this post with the Tokutumi depicted below. One can see echoes of Tokutumi’s reinvention of the disc-blowfish shape in Gracik’s pipe of the same type. There are the same organic lines and similar use of shape reflections on different axes. But this pipe is clearly Jeff Gracik’s. It is no imitation by a long shot. It’s hard to look at Jeff Gracik’s work and not see an artisan whose body of work is not just good but spectacular.

I would posit that the future of North American carvers is likely to continue to reflect various upstream influences from both Europe and Japan. Let's look at an analogous example: Tokutumi's early work really reveals his training with Ivarsson and the Danish aesthetic. But that aesthetic was later overwhelmed by Tokutumi's Japanese roots. It is almost impossible to live in that culture and not be influenced by the locus of what drives the Japanese aesthetic. You see the same balance of symmetry and asymmetry, of organic and inorganic, and of the brutal and delicate that one sees in other Japanese art forms. Ivarsson's design principles survived, but Tokutumi’s expressions morphed into something far more authentic and culturally ingrained in experience. Cultural forces shape artists like rivers shape rocks. There is an inevitability to that force. It is almost impossible to resist a battery of aesthetic norms that transcend the ages.

The same thing is happening with North American artisans. The aesthetic center of gravity is turbo-charged by cultural values like egalitarianism, democracy, freedom, and rebelliousness. These political and cultural values have aesthetic dimensions and they show up in time and space and design. For example, our rebelliousness against conventions of design makes American artists much more amenable to cultural appropriation and imitation. In some cultural contexts, this is taboo. Not here. The "anything-goes" ethos of the wild west, our bravado, and access to skills training that other cultures rope off (guild rules, etc.) will help ensure that North American artisans will continue to evolve, grow, and change in exciting ways.