A Beautifully Crafted Pipe
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Kevin Godbee - Apr 7, 2015
- 5 min read
Marshall "Butch" Armstrong
Over this past Winter, my wife Ann has been busy painting. She’s an amateur artist who likes to paint nature scenes. Her paintings show the graceful lines and shapes of our natural world. Recently I watched nine Eagles on what’s left of our lake ice, fishing for minnows. As one of them suddenly lifted off into the air, it’s wings showed the beautiful rounded arching shapes of the individual feathers. Works of art, especially taken from nature, always enhance a persons life, whether they are paintings, sculpture, or a finely crafted smoking pipe. Looking at my own pipes, and those of pipe makers online, you can easily see the graceful and even sensuous lines carved and shaped into many of them.
Fine pipe making has always fascinated me. A lot of hand made pipes are works of art, their shapes taken directly from nature. The roundness of the bowls and long slender, tapering stems are shapes that can be seen in an eagles wing or a long stemmed flower. To hold one of these beautiful works in your hand is a sensuous feeling, almost feminine. There are also big chunky, masculine shaped pipes of hard angles and edges but my preference is for the rounded, ovaled and gracefully curved pipes that most makers are producing and have produced for a very long time.
What’s really great about pipe making is how a flat edged, rough sawed chunk of wood and a straight plain piece of plastic, using hard edged tools and abrasives, can be turned into a beautiful work of usable art in the hands of a skilled crafts person. Like using brushes and palette knives, paint and canvas to produce a work of art worthy of admiration, the making of a smoking pipe is an artists creation. A lot of their own personality goes into the forming of the shape and the carving, sanding and finishing of the final work. A pipe such as this is a wonder to behold and when it smokes well it gives the same feeling of satisfaction as finding and placing the perfect painting on your living room wall. To find a pipe that is hand made, looks beautiful and smokes great is the ultimate goal.
Rich Lewis, of Lewis Pipes in Minneapolis, (http://www.lewispipe.com/) put a really nice stem on my Meerschaum pipe last year. I hadn’t smoked this pipe for many years because the original stem had broken and I just put it away in a box. It is just a simple curved, tapered stem but it accents the pipe so well and pulls the whole thing together into a very nice looking piece. Josh Whitehead (https://www.facebook.com/sammy.cat.3129) produces carved briar and antler pipes. He has made a number of churchwardens that have beautifully shaped, long sinuous stems and hand carved bowls that look like they would be a lot of fun to hold and smoke. Jonathan Levezzo, of Moonshine pipes, (https://www.facebook.com/juanathan) makes some great looking, and from the reviews I’ve read, great smoking pipes as well. He makes a cigar pipe that I’ve just got to have someday. Josh and Jonathan have both used rings of various materials to accent their pipes and really make them look beautiful. Making small rings out of wood, antler or other material is not easy and definitely adds to the value of the pipe and still, some makers are producing very affordable pipes.
Nanna Ivarsson, who’s pipes were sold out on SmokingPipes.com when I looked last, has a professional design background and makes some beautiful pipes. Kris Edwin Barber, of Edwin Pipes (http://edwinpipes.com/) has some beautifully shaped, long stem pipes on his web site. You can tell he puts a lot of time and love into his work. These pipe makers and many, many more show that there is a love of artistic quality when it comes to making and selling smoking pipes, and prove that they are real works of art.
I have done a bit of wood working in the past so I know what goes into making a beautiful work of art that someone would love to own. I have made jewelry boxes with wood hinges and exotic wood earrings that I sold at a shop in town. A lot of cutting, shaping, sanding and finishing went into my work and the prices I had to charge so that people would buy them were not enough to make a living at. When some of the prices for hand made pipes seem kind of high, it helps to know how much work went into making the pipe. Not only the work but the cost of tools, equipment and supplies. None of these things are cheap. Most pipe makers own wood lathes to do the shaping of the pipes on. These machines can cost thousands of dollars and must be maintained over the years. Not to mention drill presses, files, sand paper, stains, dyes and many more things needed by the artisan to complete their work.
I think it’s important to support the pipe making community. There are a lot of factory made pipes on the market that are high quality and very nice to own but I really like knowing that there are artisans out there creating these beautiful, one of a kind works and it would be a great loss if they weren’t doing it. My wife’s cousin is a professional artist and we have one of her prints on our living room wall but it’s just as important to have Ann’s paintings too. Now if I could just get her to make hand painted pipes. Hmmm…
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Marshall Lee Armstrong enjoys camping, fly fishing, kayaking, painting, drumming and writing. He has published two books of poetry and writes a blog called "The Window". He is 58-years old, and has worked as a Rock Band Drummer, Electroplater, Chemical Process Technician, and Circuitry Manufacturing Supervisor. He is currently a Medical Lab Technician. He started smoking pipes in 1980. |
Written by Kevin Godbee
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 636. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Barry Kane. Barry started smoking a pipe in 1961 when he was 14-years old. Back then it seemed like everybody smoked, and you could buy pipes and tobacco just about anywhere. Barry is a true old-school pipe smoker, sticking to just one blend. See if you can guess which one before listening. At the top of the show Brian will give his take on Scandinavian Tobacco Group’s purchase of Mac Baren and Sutliff Tobacco and their announcement that they will be shut down.
There’s a pipe in my collection that I cannot bring myself to smoke, though I’ve had it for more years than I care to recall. It’s old, or shall I say, well experienced; that experience, that oldness came to it long before it was in my possession. The pipe is an old Comoy’s Grand Slam from the 1940s. The shape (#93), a slightly canted, stack billiard (sometimes referred to as a Belgian) is right up my alley, and it’s a beautiful example of it. It came to me with some wear and tear; nothing unusual for an old pipe, but more the signs of one that has been well loved, smoked a lot, treated as a favorite tool, cherished, in a sense, by frequent use. It’s the pipe equivalent of a vintage car that’s been driven a lot, enjoyed fully and maintained adequately, rather than one kept in a spotless garage, dusted and detailed weekly, brought out only for leisurely Sunday drives, or to be ogled behind the ropes at the next Concours d’Elegance. 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It was something now completely lost to time. Until it wasn’t. Memories are powerful things, and there is no sense more tightly bound to memory than our sense of smell. One whiff was all it took to carry me back in time, conjuring a vivid recollection of something long submerged in the inky depths of a subconscious mind. Look, I know as well as anyone that pipes are meant to be smoked, and that many feel it almost sacrilegious to have a pipe and not set it to its intended task. In this case, I simply can’t. I won’t. Ever. Rationally, I am fairly certain this pipe would probably be a great smoke. It was too well loved by its previous caretaker to be anything less than that. My choice not to smoke it is an emotional one, not something rational. Of the thousands of pipes that have passed through my hands over the years, this is the only one to create such a singular and vivid, almost Proustian recollection of temps perdu, of lost time. It revivified a long dormant memory that is mine, and mine alone, and that’s enough. I keep it in a drawer with other old English pipes. In some ways, it’s nothing special, just a nice old pipe. I don’t lavish it with any particular care that arguably befits the hidden treasure that it holds. It’s not in a special box, or displayed preciously in a glass cabinet. Every once in a while, I take it out, point my nose bowlwards, and every time, those memories return just as powerfully as they did the first time. I have no idea how long it’s been since its last owner smoked it, but in the years I’ve had it, there seems to have been very little degradation of the aroma, and that’s […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 635. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with James Ravenwood. James is the boutique tobacco blender of Ravenwood Blends. His blending started out as a fun hobby, and he now has professionally packaged commercially available products with some great tin art. Part of his interest in pipe smoking goes back to fond memories of a retired Navy Veteran that lived on his street while he was growing up that would sit in his driveway smoking a pipe all day. Later, in 2011 he began smoking pipes and soon after started experimenting with mixing different tobaccos. His other hobby, that he has been doing for 30 years, is photography. He takes wonderful photos of outdoor spaces, and still life pictures of pipes and tobacco. You can see them on his Instagram @thebriarfellowship. At the top of the show we’ll have an Ask the Pipemaker segment with renowned pipe artisan Jeff Gracik.
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Soon now, supposedly, our neighborhoods will shift from grinning pumpkins, skeletons in various assortments, and zombies dashing about to pretty reindeer, angels, and flashing lights illuminating homes with sparkling stars and laughing, scurrying Santas. But, lest we forget, there is the turkey season, fancy pie aromas wafting from kitchens, and a national pardon of a big Tom Turkey. Remember, now, that only one of these holiday personalities is a pipe smoker. And that is the hefty, bearded fellow in a bright red suit sitting in a sleigh with a herd of deer hitched up and ready to streak across the globe, bringing tidings of joy and many presents. Ok, the scene is set for the next couple of months, right? So, before we get too far off the beaten path, let’s just take a deep breath of fresh autumn air, shall we? Ahh. That’s better, isn’t it? What’s got the Pundit in a snit is not all the Halloween spooks who came a-jostling for candy. 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A fact is not a truth until you love it—Shelby Foote. A parting thought: It is said that famed Southern author William Faulkner carried a packed pipe in a coat pocket wherever he went. That’s one effective way to deal with workday conflicts and confusion. A calm and objective judgment in our everyday human affairs, as the quantum man said.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 633. Our featured guest tonight is Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and the accompanying online store. We’ll have JD and Brian talking about what’s new at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, Brian will discuss tobacco growing, what happens to the leaf, and provide updated information on where tobacco is being gown today. Tobacco production originated in the United States and we were once the #1 producer. It’s quite different now.
How about combining the two and have your wife include a pipe in her artwork? Then you could post it on our “pipes in art” thread.
Thanks for a well written and nicely illustrated article that forces a rethinking of pipes in our life — and art in our pipes. Too often I overlook the obvious craftsmanship invested in my pipes and treat them in a utilitarian way. It’s nice to step back and admire them as products of both Nature and mind.
Thanks for the comments guys. If you have ever tried woodworking then you know how hard it can be to get the shape of something, “just right.” The amazing work being done these days by pipe artisans is truly a gift to us all, even if you can’t own them it’s a real treat to see the pipes and know they’re being appreciated. Edgreen, good idea. I’ll have to work on that.