Joan Bonet Nadal (Manacor, 1929 - Palma, 2017) was a master pipe-maker and writer.

Widely known as “Bonet de ses pipes” (Bonet of the pipes) he learnt the craft of pipe-making from his father who, imprisoned in 1936 as a member of the left-wing Republican party Esquerra Republicana, started his business of producing handmade pipes in the Manacor prison. From the age of fourteen Joan Bonet worked as a pipe-maker and achieved great prestige among pipe smokers around the world. In 1982 he made a pipe for a thousand smokers, which was featured in Guinness World Records. He was also President of the Spanish Pipe Club.

In 1975, Joan Bonet, a cultural activist and stalwart of the Catalan language, translated into Catalan Joaquim Verdaguer’s book El arte de fumar en pipa. He also published the short story collections Les rondalles de la pipa (1978), ...I fumant en pipa! (1981), Pipades i vivències (1983) and Amb pipa i sense: el sisè sentit i altres contextos (2004), in addition to the popularising works Las pipas: prontuario de pipología (1978) and La pipa en Baleares (1980).

Joan Bonet was a member of Associació d’Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (AELC – Association of Catalan Language Writers).



Web page: Toni Terrades for AELC.
Photographs: © Sebastià Bonet.
Translated by Julie Wark.