In Bijeljina, in the northeast of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), a local craftsman has been handcrafting wooden pipes for decades. Made from fossilized wood that spent hundreds of years underwater, each creation by master craftsman Milovan Petricevic is unique.
Milovan has been making wooden smoking pipes for almost five decades. What started as a hobby has now become a source of income and pride. Initially, he crafted pipes from “ordinary wood” and gifted them to others.
“The wood is fossilized and spent a lot of time underwater. For example, there’s an oak tree that I currently own, I didn’t do it myself, but some guys in Zagreb sent it for examination before further sale, and they got [test results] saying it spent between 6-7 thousand years underwater,” says Milovan Petricevic.
He sources the wood from people who extract it from rivers and marshes in BiH and Serbia.
“I prepare the wood on a block that I prepare, I have to glue it nicely, draw the pipe, to avoid mistakes, and then I start working on a lathe that I have prepared for these things,” he adds.
The sanding and carving of a single pipe can take several weeks. Among the hundreds of pipes he has made, no two are exactly alike. Today, his pipes are bought by collectors from all over the world.
“I send a lot of pipes to the United States (U.S.), to Germany; I have some made for Austria, and also here, I’ve made some both for Serbia and BiH,” he adds.
Milovan has been retired for the past five years and is fully dedicated to crafting pipes, Radio Slobodna Evropa writes.
E.Dz.
