Pipe Makers - Then And Now?

My question is, was the briar better back in the 60's and older?

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No. Of course not. Then, as now, there were quality pipes and there were cheap crap pipes.

Were the large companies pipe makers (Kaywoodie, GBD, etc) better trained? Less automated? And does any of it matter?

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Better trained than? Were they well trained? Yes. Were they the equivalent of todays artisan carvers? To my mind, hell yes and better than most of them. Consider that a factory carver had to hit the same model pattern time after time after time while maintaining a high percentage of 1sts. They couldn't just carve whatever came into their heads and make all pieces however they felt like making them. That takes some real expertise. People worked their way up through a system, and learned from people with expertise first hand. I guess the Danish equivalent would have been W O Larsen, and look the great carvers who came out of that shop.
Less automated? Depends on the shop.
Skills always matter.
As for the rest, it's all subjective. Different people want different things from their pipes and tobaccos.

Not certain. Without question, quality standards in manufacturing were nowhere near as stringent in the 60's as they are today. I say that for volume mass production such as automobiles, electronics, etc.. Not sure if that applies to pipes. But manufacturing processes such as Statistical Process Control weren't even known in the 60's. However, I suspect for products such as pipes, they had better apprenticeship programs. And you're certainly not talking about hold .001 tolerances when you're discussing briar smoking pipes.
Are artisan pipes a better road in general? In general, I believe so. But just because a pipe is carved by a so called Artisan doesn't mean it is great pipe or a great value. I've personally found Artisans such as Rad Davis, Larryson, Ryan Alden, Martin Cermak and here recently, Alexander Hasty, to be of better quality, better smoking and better aesthetics than even Castello. That's just a few I have personal experience with, there are those there who have much greater and wider experience than I have. I've also had some Artisan pipes I was less than impressed by. For example, I have several Ian Walker Northern Briar pipes. Every one I've owned was an excellent smoker. However, the drills are often quite sloppy where even a 1/8th or 1/4 bend won't allow for a pipe cleaner to pass without a massive amount of finagling. Ian is a fantastic gentleman and I would buy one of his pipes again but only after I tested it with a pipe cleaner myself.
There were probably 5 to 10 x more pipes made per year in the 60's. Perhaps the ratio is greater. So it also stands to reason the quality overall was a bit lower and the briar may have not been as good. That's not to say however the quality of briar and workmanship on higher end pipes was not superb. It means due to the volume, they were spitting out run of the mill pipes at a high rate which almost always results in somewhat lower quality.

". Consider that a factory carver had to hit the same model pattern time after time after time while maintaining a high percentage of 1sts."
Nonsense. Utter nonsense. There are in fact cut-down lists for certain factories where they started out looking for a big billiard, and if that failed, there was a secondary and tertiary spec to hit (by machine) if the first, larger pipe wasn't good.
Watching what video we have of how a truly automated pipe factory works, there's VERY LITTLE room for highly-skilled and versatile workers. Sitting at a bench all day knocking the pips off of a pre-turned stummel isn't pipe making. It's something peasants in france would do all winter, bag after bag of stummels.
Put the piece of wood in the chuck - brrrt... the bowl is now shaped by the cutting head. Zoop - it's flipped over, and another cutter finishes the shaping - to completion! brrrrt. The stummel is ready for the 5 minutes of hand finishing that a factory pipe gets.
Is there finishing skill involved? Heck yeah. But the idea that basically all 200 people in the factory are master pipe makers at any given time is utter bull shit.
This factory is less automated than some.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E66Cmw3uCqE
But anyone could make a pipe here, with basic operational skillsets.
Now, was briar better back then? Why would it be? What would be the reason, other than that one can imagine a situation of over-harvesting. But if that occurred, it occurred back then.. not now. Now... by golly we are fussy about our wood, how boiled, how long, how many water changes, how slow to dry, what region is it from again? Look at the bags and bags of briar being dumped in that video. All select grade wonder briar no doubt? Baloney. Cheapo ebaauchon cuts, some of which would have made great pipes, some of which would have been firewood.
It's not that hard to make a really decent pipe. It truly isn't. What's fascinating or bizarre to me is how many companies simply fail to implement the meanest of programs which would ensure that their pipes were drilled well, that the stems were made well. I guess it comes down to costing an extra 10 minutes on a pipe, and of course, if you are making a pipe in 10 minutes, then that's double the labor for... what? People buy 'em anyway.
All you have to do is get smoke from one end of the pipe to the other in one piece. It's not a moon landing! But tons of pipes just don't manage it. Whistle-stemmed, crooked-drilled, pinched airway piece-o-junk... pipe shops are full of them.
I think the pipes made by companies in the past who cared about making good pipes (Dunhill, GBD, Barling etc) are great. I think lots are crap and to be avoided - I saw a gorgeous set of BBB cased pipes sell on eBay a few years back, and just looking at the way they were made, I didn't even bid, cuz they were going to be bad smokers.
I actually have a pipe on hand, a guaranteed bad smoker. I'll take some pics and we can talk about it, as compared to say, an artisanally made pipe that I also happen to have on hand.

Nonsense. Utter nonsense. There are in fact cut-down lists for certain factories where they started out looking for a big billiard, and if that failed, there was a secondary and tertiary spec to hit (by machine) if the first, larger pipe wasn't good.

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The nonsense is yours. I don't know where you got your information but I got mine from Pete Siegel who was James Upshall's and Ser Jacopo's importer, as well as one of Dunhill's top level dealers and distributors and who went over with me how this worked. He was doing this when you were in knickers.
Yes there was a cut down stage, but it wasn't like you could start with a Great Dane and end up with a Chihuahua and it was all just fine. Within a model pattern there was some leeway but not a whole lot. Cut downs were primarily a matter of removing slight imperfections that could turn up in the final stage of finishing and raising the percentage of firsts.

Our information is the same, it's the conclusion you reach that isn't tenable. You state that briar hasn't changed, but that somehow you know that more smooth-grade pipes used to be produced. I deny this.
There was not a lot of leeway. That's right. So if you cut a pipe and find a flaw, sometimes you can modify it successfully, sometimes not. True then, true now. We both agree on this.
All these pipe companies had blasted and rusticated pipes for that reason. Briar is crummy stuff.
Were there guys in every factory who were magicians? Yeah I think so. Somebody had to know the whole process. Were MOST of the people in those factories versatile pipe-making geniuses? No.
I'm not making it up dude, people would take a huge bad of stummels to rasp off in the winter in rural France. Part of life, a side-gig as we would say today. Lots of pipe making is dreary. This as per "The Illustrated History of the Pipe" by Mssrs Liebaert and Maya, as one example. A communal effort.
Grind out 900 of the same shape (this takes a day or 5 or whatever). Pick through them, find the best, mark them, send them to the best of your finishers. The rest you grade and finish (or cut down and repeat) as needed. Fit a bunch of stems, and polish.

Are they really different as smokers?

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No. What artisan pipes are is just that, artisan. The differences you'll see are the differences in making a pipe in 2 hours vs. 20 hours. You'll find they generally have more unique finishes and shapes. They are more carefully finished and the little details get more attention. You're less likely to have a mistake slip through the cracks like poor drilling. Are they worth it? Absolutely, if you can afford them and like the pipe. Pipes tend to last a lifetime, why not have it be beautiful if you can?

My only artisan pipe smokes like a dream. It was made by a Canadian forum member using a stem 'blank' I think, but it was detailed at the slot and button very nicely. The internals are spot on. The draw and the completion rate of the bowls I smoke is smooth and right at 99%.

The wood? Maple!

I know that my guy has at least conferred with Sasquatch, who's work, from what I've seen, rivals his compatriot Michael Parks, or, maybe exceeds?

The thing about buying an artisan is that the 'artist' will be, or is expected to be, selective until the completion and transfer of his wares rather than being in 'production mode'. That's what you pay for, in addition to their respective reputation.

Pretty tough to exceed Michael Parks, although I do outweigh him by about 100 pounds, so he tends not to get mouthy around me. Honestly, he makes very, very fine pipes, and is willing to build pipes to within very small tolerances - angles, sizes etc which I'm not interested in doing. He sees it as a challenge, I see it as a pain in the ass.
One of the interesting things I find in the artisanal pipe making community is just how much room there is, either to do something wildly different than other pipe makers, or whether it's a certain niche (including price point). Lots of ways to be successful as a pipe maker, but probably the biggest thing is that you have to consistently make pipes that work really well - if you don't, a lot of people will walk away (as they should imho).
We have two problems, as pipe smokers seeking a really great pipe. First is, even if we all agree in principle on what makes a great pipe, how we want it to behave, say, we don't all agree on exactly the recipe to make that happen. The subjective smoking experience with any given pipe is not identical between two people, so it's hard to make firm analytic statements. I don't buy the notion that pipes of some period were prima facie better than pipes of some other period. I've had the good fortune to see and smoke many many pipes from all sorts of periods, and I've found some great ones and some total dogs in most brands, because there is a surprising lack of consistency in the production. Dunhill's consistency is remarkable, whether you agree or not with just how they are made, they've been made very, very similarly for 100 years. What's changed in the last 10 or 20 years for the positive imho is just how much information is shared by pipe smokers and pipe makers - the internet has really allowed for many more interactions, a lot more info to flow where it needs to flow. The subsequent de-mystification of pipe making might make some few guys a bit maudlin, but I think in general more people know more about how pipes work than ever before. I think the idea that how a pipe smokes is "luck of the draw" is going away, as it should (again imho). This speaks to the second problem: pipe smoking experience is normative, we can't help that as a human being, so what happens is guys get a pipe from 1950 and it's stamped Bruyere Guarantee and instead of understanding what it is about that pipe that is so good (or bad), they just know that any pipe stamped Bruyere Guarantee is going to be great (or terrible, whichever experience they found) rather than analyzing the pipe itself. This has lead us to all kinds of mysticism, and muddied the waters terribly for new smokers who are hoping not to have to buy 50 pipes to find one good one.
I fight the mysticism. It is in my best interest to do so as a maker, because of course, I don't want to be in a position of saying "Uh, yeah, old pipes are better man, I can't make anything near that good nowadays...". But the truth is it comes from my long road of understanding how pipes work, why one pipe that's brown and 1/2 bent and 5 1/2" long is a gurgling piece of junk and another that looks just like it smokes dry and cool and flavorsome. It isn't magic briar, it isn't voodoo, it isn't even arcane knowledge. It's fluid dynamics. You show me a pipe, new or old, with half decent internals, and I'll show you a half decent smoker.

Our information is the same, it's the conclusion you reach that isn't tenable. You state that briar hasn't changed, but that somehow you know that more smooth-grade pipes used to be produced. I deny this.

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Not what I wrote. I have no idea what the percentage of smooths to blasts were made at any time. If you do, please state sources and figures.

What I did say is that the cut down stage was primarily an effort to remove flaws revealed at the finishing stage while still retaining the proportions dictated by the model pattern whose number was stamped into the shank, the purpose of which was to increase the percentage of "flawless" 1sts. When corresponding with Pete, his estimate in average production was that flawless smooths were about 70%, but that percentage could be raised by another 10% by cutting down. Pete noted that one problem with switching from a primarily hand driven production line to a machine driven one was that the percentage of flawless pipes dropped significantly. This is all about cosmetics, not function. And if the cut down procedure didn't work, the pipe could be sandblasted. Or, as Barling used to do, turned into a Quaint with unique carving and rustication.
Could an attempt to be made to reshape the stummel? Sure, as long as you could hit another established pattern. And that takes considerable skill, even with "back up" patterns.
I remember what Peter Lloyd, a hugely successful illustrator of Sci Fi, and one of the original TRON visualists, once said to me, "The mark of a highly talented artist isn't that he never paints himself into a corner, it's that he can paint himself out of it."
I don't know how other makers handled their inventories, but Barling didn't make stock to have on hand. They produced to order. How do I know this? It's in a letter from their US distributor to the US dealer network regarding supplies and other changes going on with the Company. So they really did need to hit those patterns to fulfill their orders.

I've read a bit and watched some vids since taking up a pipe 5 yrs ago. I've conferred with C.Besse about his progress on some of his attempts, too.

What strikes me about these 'artisans' is that they acknowledge that not every pipe they make is a good one, they just don't let those out of the shop.

And...an Artisan cannot determine his customer's ability, which, if substandard, or inept, might become the fuel for a negative review that is not deserved.

I see those who can and do make em as some of our leading ambassadors in 'the community'.

It seems to me that for ever reason, internet education or what ever, we now analyze our pipes performance more than ever. The "old codgers" I grew up around would get a pipe that didn't smoke to their satisfaction, they would toss it and get another until they found one they liked. Granted, they smoked the more drug store brands and none ever had a "nice" pipe but...maybe we are a little more demanding now.

Unknowable. With estate pipes, some of the stinkers have been culled, so what is available should be collectively better. On the other hand, new pipes haven't passed the test of time, so might smoke quite well but not last. So a comparison is shaky. Maybe today the tools are better, and with internet the opportunity to make a business of pipe carving at a higher level might be better, but old time know-how, patience, and apprenticing are somewhat gone. I'd guess the trade-offs even things out. I'd suspect a lot more parity than we might think. (Ever noticed how smart those ancient Greeks and other cultures of their vintage are? They're supposed to be infantile in historical intellect, and they often sound a lot smarter than today's experts and gurus.)

The thing that hasn't changed in the pipe smoking community is the love of myths. We have the "pipes were better then, briar was better then" myths, along all sorts of myths about the act of smoking a pipe, including the "fine white ash" and "smoke to the bottom of the bowl" myths.