During his childhood, he showed interest in folk art. In Hornej Štubni, where he lived as a boy, he spent long hours observing the work of folk carver and stonemason Matej Čupek. It didn’t just stop at observing – as a young man, he tried creating his own first stone sculptures.
He was invited by the Educational Institute in Bratislava to the first weekly symposium, led professionally by artists. He participated in others as well and created something from stone each time. Until he received an invitation to a symposium of folk artists in Záhorie, led by sculptor Michal Zdravecký. However, the participants couldn’t find suitable stones for work, so the idea of trying to work with clay arose. Here are his first encounters with this material anchored.
The experiences he gained over time working with clay, his collector’s admiration for pipes, and the desire to have a pipe according to his own ideas led him to the decision to produce clay pipes. He wasn’t a big smoker – as a boy, he tried smoking dry leaves with friends, but the pipe captivated him in 1968 during his basic military service when it started becoming fashionable. As he says, initially officers smoked, then non-commissioned officers dared to do so, and finally, they were given this opportunity as well as ordinary soldiers. So, the pipe is associated with this period of his life when the scent of fragrant tobacco spread everywhere in the barracks corridors.
He studied professional literature for making pipes, visited old pipe makers, but still chose an original process. He doesn’t mold clay for pipes. He works with a piece of dried clay, shaping it with small knives and chisels he made himself. He fires the pipes at the academic sculptor Peter Bukovský’s kiln, solving the initial cracking problem of the heads by inserting a wooden pipe stem into the clay head using a sealing cork. He fills the fired head with shellac or colors it with glazes. He turns the pipe stems on a lathe, mostly from walnut, plum, or cherry wood. He personally recommends smoking pipes with longer stems because they cool the smoke more perfectly, which is also captured on their walls.
His individual style is distinctive, the pipes resemble each other, but each one is unique. He mainly depicts hunting themes on the heads with miniature heads of deer, stag, chamois, bear, squirrel, or with relief images of an eagle or grouse. For fishermen, pipes with fish-shaped heads are intended. He simply loves the pipe – it is a symbol of comfort and creative thinking for him.