I realized that I didn't say "thank you" for the offer. I do appreciate the offer, but I wasn't truly offended enough to deserve a pipe. I mean, if I truly felt my feeling were hurt, then yeh. It was more like I happened to be on the sofa when the conversation started. Ha ha.
I still don't understand who these terrible pipemakers are. I do like these new pipe makers that I keep running into in our area. I haven't seen any terrible pipes, but Todd puts more attention to detail into his stemwork than most pipe makers. Even many high grade Danish pipes don't tend to put the detail into the button design and bore that he does. But, the new guys that I've met, like Rowley, Black, and even some kids getting into it, I like what they're doing. Pipes are more than prices, to me. More than just smoking tools. The best ones are relationships. Waiting for it, anticipation, effort. The courtship of learning how it wants to be smoked. The way it feels. The way it looks. The way it responds to me and how I smoke. Two holes in a piece of wood, all else is just what our minds make of it. Whether a "master" made it, or a kid with an imagination. Not everyone sees pipes or smokes pipes the same way. If I find that giving $500 to an up and coming radical is worth it to start the relationship, whether it was carved on someone's front porch with a pocketknife and a drill press or frazed out like a mass produced widgit, that is my decision. And, I am glad that the market is wide open.
In my own work, jewelry, there are self-taught folks hitting a piece of silver four times with a hammer and calling it a pendant and asking four or five times what I get for custom cut stones in classical mountings, but that diversity only enriches the market. Competition builds interest in what the rest of us are doing. It's a good thing. Pipe smoking is on the upswing. I see it in my own neighborhood, my own town, running into new pipe guys and girls. Less couch room at the B&M. Having a flood of new folks, self-taught, or picked it up at a workshop, or some sort of apprenticeship, all of that doesn't matter a hill of beans to me.
I think this whole string was just caused by some growing pains in the field, ...maybe. :
:
I still don't understand who these terrible pipemakers are. I do like these new pipe makers that I keep running into in our area. I haven't seen any terrible pipes, but Todd puts more attention to detail into his stemwork than most pipe makers. Even many high grade Danish pipes don't tend to put the detail into the button design and bore that he does. But, the new guys that I've met, like Rowley, Black, and even some kids getting into it, I like what they're doing. Pipes are more than prices, to me. More than just smoking tools. The best ones are relationships. Waiting for it, anticipation, effort. The courtship of learning how it wants to be smoked. The way it feels. The way it looks. The way it responds to me and how I smoke. Two holes in a piece of wood, all else is just what our minds make of it. Whether a "master" made it, or a kid with an imagination. Not everyone sees pipes or smokes pipes the same way. If I find that giving $500 to an up and coming radical is worth it to start the relationship, whether it was carved on someone's front porch with a pocketknife and a drill press or frazed out like a mass produced widgit, that is my decision. And, I am glad that the market is wide open.
In my own work, jewelry, there are self-taught folks hitting a piece of silver four times with a hammer and calling it a pendant and asking four or five times what I get for custom cut stones in classical mountings, but that diversity only enriches the market. Competition builds interest in what the rest of us are doing. It's a good thing. Pipe smoking is on the upswing. I see it in my own neighborhood, my own town, running into new pipe guys and girls. Less couch room at the B&M. Having a flood of new folks, self-taught, or picked it up at a workshop, or some sort of apprenticeship, all of that doesn't matter a hill of beans to me.
I think this whole string was just caused by some growing pains in the field, ...maybe. :
:
