Daaaamn, I need a haircut!

Because we had a professional photographer with us the entire time, our entire trip to Reno and then Oregon was documented in great detail. Along with being a very talented up-and-coming pipemaker, Steve Morrisette is an unbelievable photographer. All of these shots are his . . . unless he's in them. In that case someone is doing the "teenage girls at Spring break" move where everyone clusters together while somebody holds the camera out with one arm and tries to get the shot in focus. It's probably Jeff as he has a penchant for such things. Do enjoy the photos.

Here we are relaxing in the room the night before the show. The East Tower rooms were really fantastic--just renovated. The West Tower rooms have teal or pink velvet bedspreads . . . no really.

This is actually the view out our hotel room window. Not bad.

In this shot, I'm just tightening the thumb screws on collector Mitch Michaelson. He wound up buying the pipe only after I offered to throw in the extra layer of undercoating for free. 

Jeff and I approach pipemaking very similarly and have great respect for one another's work. He might even be the second best pipemaker in the US . . . 

Brad in his signature eight panel cap and me in my recently acquired "mop." Brad actually has these custom made by a milliner in London. Mine is made in celebration of the fact that my days of straight razor shaves and custom tailored suits are in the past. 

A snowy roller-coaster.

Mount Shasta

I try to keep things pretty sober, but the other guys are constantly engaging in some sort of tomfoolery. I'm not exactly sure what the hell we're doing here, but I'm confident it was someone else's idea.

In case space aliens ever decide to visit southern Oregon the owners of this lama farm have sent them these well wishes. The astute observer will also pick up on the subtle message of patriotism they're trying to send.

After about six hours of driving, we finally arrived at casa-Pohlmann.

Here, Jeff and I have set to work rearranging some of Brad's equipment for better efficiency. Please notice the floral china teapot in the foreground. We may be a coarse and rowdy bunch, but we're not about to have our tea from anything less than real porcelain. 

In this shot, I've just told Brad he's no longer my first-best-friend, but has moved down the list to my second-best-friend. Clearly, he's incredulous. 

One of the most important aspects of pipemaking is first creating the tools to do so with precision and efficiency.

Putting the final touches on our collective blowfish. After shaping, the piece will be marked and drilled. 

In the South, beer and guns go together like biscuits and gravy. In southern Oregon, I guess they go together like petruli and power crystals.

Working on my contribution to a blowfish set that Jeff and I are putting together.

Brad smoking a Cuban while shaping a blowfish.

Jeff planning his attack on a little lathe-turned billiard.

Brad popped a vintage tin of Dunhill Mixture #10, a wonderful full English that has been out of production for a couple of decades. One of the great things about being friends with old folks like Brad and Steve is that you get to smoke tobacco older than you. 

Damn . . . I need a haircut.

Carver's Colloquium

Last weekend's Reno Pipe Show was, in my opinion, a resounding success. It brought out a number of top American carvers, some prominent (mostly west coast) collectors, and brought to light a truly first-rate venue for what I hope will be our next big annual pipe show. This first show was small and the organizers at Pipe Makers Emporium still seemed to be getting their sea legs, but it was a very well organized event that showed tremendous potential. There is talk of combining this show and Marty Pulvers' Las Vegas show next year. All I can say for those who missed it--and that's most of you-- is don't miss it next year. 

It was a pleasure meeting new carver Charles Cole at the show. 

In this picture, I'm drawing a cutaway of some spoon bits.

Now the primary reason I attended the Reno show was to enjoy the company of my good friends and fellow pipemakers, Jeff Gracik, Steve Morrisette, and Brad Pohlmann. Brad rolled out the red carpet for us at his ranch in southern Oregon, and we all gladly accepted. We left Sparks on Sunday morning and embarked on a beautiful journey north to casa Pohlmann. The scenic highlight of this trip was beautiful snow capped mount Shasta, captured in all its resplendent glory by Steve, who among other things is a professional photographer. I'll post some photos here when I receive them. No rush, Steve!

Upon our arrival we were greeted warmly by a menagerie of creatures ranging from horses to hens, Corgy's, a colossal canine the size of my own "best friend," and the most beautiful and delicate creature of all, Brad's daughter Brittney. I've been following Brittney in pictures since she was a wee lass, and seeing her for the first time as an accomplished and confident young woman was really a treat. 

From here, we moved to the shop where the first order of business was some reorganization. We applied some Lean Systems implementation to Brad's already spacious and well-equipped shop to improve the flow of work and maximize productivity. The result was that all four of us could be working productively at the same time, in the same space, without a great deal of overlap.

 

The four of us in repose (From left to right, Jeff, Brad, Todd, and Steve)

We decided to focus our attention on two shapes, the billiard and the blowfish. The former is, at turns, both the simplest and most difficult shape to execute, and a requisite for any papemaker wishing to claim the title. The latter has become the new "benchmark" for a carver who wants to show mastery of shape creativity, etc. Unfortunately, it's also the most often butchered shape there is. It was for this reason that we set our sights on the two aforementioned shapes. The four of us are all at various points along the learning curve, and it was a great privilege to instruct and to learn from one another. Jeff and I, who work similarly, were able to impart a number of time-saving techniques to Brad and Steve, while all of us were able to learn from Brad's masterful employment of precision tooling. Steve, who is an up-and-comer in the world of high grade pipemaking, brought a fresh approach to the process that we "hardened veterans" always benefit from.

 

Offering Brad a shaping tutorial on the blowfish.

The few days that we spent toiling away in the shop were productive ones. We turned out a number of pieces, both individually and collaboratively. Jeff and I managed to complete 90% of a blowfish set which will be available in the coming week. I free-handed a long shanked lovat primarily to demonstrate the process, while Jeff shaped a wispy little featherweight billiard on the lathe.

Our collective three day output.

The highlight of our productive efforts, however, is this smooth blowfish which was created collaboratively. I did most of the shaping with Steve, while Brad and Jeff worked on the engineering--the alignment, drilling, countersink, etc. We each took our turn with the stem, and the final polishing was done, if I remember correctly, by Steve. The pipe turned out beautifully and bears all four of our stamps. It is going to be available for purchase later this week, and once photographed properly, it can be viewed on each of our sites.

 

The collective blowfish

All in all, this was a tremendous few days. It reminded me why I love doing this so much and offered a rare opportunity to share something so often done in solitude. 

A New Breed of Fish

I've recently been corresponding with a well known collector about doing a couple of blowfish that specifically reflect my "style." The blowfish is a shape I'm pretty comfortable with. I've probably made well over a hundred of them, and have developed a specific set of lines, contours and ratios that I try to incorporate in each piece.

There is something of a controversy over the name "blowfish." For Lars, the moniker refers to a bent Scoop with teardrop shank and an ivory or boxwood ring. What is now more typically called the "blowfish," Lars refers to simply as the "cross-grain," but I digress. Essentially, my own blowfish is a melding of Lars' crossgrain and the "fugu" blowfish I learned to make at the feet of Hiroyuki Tokutomi.

In this case, however, my intention is to move outside the parameters of those norms I typically allow to bracket my work, and create pieces which specifically reflect my own ideas about it. The problem is that so-called "original" iterations of this shape are often hideous flaccid-shanked monstrosities with more "fins" than a radiator, or worse yet, wagon wheels on a stick. I'm hoping to avoid both while still managing to breathe new life into the famed fish. In my opinion, I've done that with the piece below, but you know what they say; opinions are like . . . everybody's got one.

Scarlett Johansson vs. the Klingon

I've been engaged in or following several recent discussions on pipe aesthetics, design principles, pricing, and the "obligations" of an aspiring carver. It may be worth mentioning that this post could be offensive to some. It is not intended as such, but if your sensibilities are delicate, or if you are typically engaged in acts of self aggrandizement, you may wish to hit the "back" button and pretend this entry does not exist.

To aspiring carvers, let me say this. Aesthetics, especially in the realm of crafted objects, is not purely subjective and "beauty" is not strictly "in the eye of the beholder." We are all wired in a particular way to "see" certain things--things like symmetry, balance, continuity, etc. I'm not suggesting, for instance, that a smooth pipe is more beautiful than a blasted one, or even that a Chonowitsch is necessarily more beautiful than a Stanwell. What I am suggesting is that a pipe can be, more or less, objectively ugly, ill formed, or poorly designed. I know. I have handled many such pipes and made some over the years as well. 

To use an exaggerated example, let's take someone who is very collectively viewed as beautiful, Scarlett Johansson, and contrast her with a Star Trek klingon: 

Scarlett Johansson

Klingon

Now my guess is that only a few would find the Klingon more attractive than Miss Johansson--or even attractive at all, for that matter. The only real point of this admittedly extreme example is that we are generally wired to recognize beauty in the same things. That does not mean that everyone will always agree--otherwise aesthetics would be objective rather than collective, and clearly they are not. I've recently made this argument on a web forum that I post to. Below I've summarized my response to the suggestions that A) "beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and B) if someone buys a pipe that means it must have been well made.

_______________________________________

"Yes, there is a subjective element to design, but there is also an objective element that nobody seems willing to talk about. Since the "golden ratio" has been brought up, I will use that as an example, though Scarlett Johansson may work just as well.

Many of the objects in nature that are almost unanimously regarded as beautiful employ this ratio. The word "employ" isn't exactly right since there is no intentionality with a flower, it just is, and it is beautiful. The translation is that our brains are hard wired to regard certain things as beautiful for reasons having to do with everything from biology to socialization. "Tastes" change, but there are constants--like the way that one line relates to another, or the repetition of certain curves, or the constant gradient increase/decrease in thickness or diameter along an arc.

Now unless your trained to see (and speak) that way, you don't see something and say "the diameter of that flower's filament decreases regularly and gradually along an implied arc and therefore I find it pleasing." Instead, your brain puts this together and basically just informs you that the flower is pretty. 

I would argue that it is little different with a pipe. You see it, and you know instantly that it is beautiful. In most cases, this is because the lines move in harmony together, the arcs are regular, the design is cohesive, everything "works." Your brain processes all that data and just sends the signal "beautiful" to your conscious mind. Yes, people can respond differently to the same stimuli, but let's remember Scarlett and the Klingon.

The other point I want to respond to is that "the market" has something to say about "success" in design. The market is a factor, but not an especially reliable one. The reason is that there are so many other factors playing into a decision to purchase something that it can't be boiled down to "these pipes sell because they are beautiful and well formed."

All you've got to do is look on eBay at the bidding wars that occasionally take place over some truly heinous creations. When this happens--and especially when it's a new/newer carver--I think the wrong message is actually sent. One thing I know to be true is that the ugliest, most ill formed pipes I have ever made have sold. It's bad, I know, but the market cannot always be relied upon either to reward excellent design, or to punish poor design. Those of us who make pipes for a living, who have to have a trained eye, and who depend on that eye to help us bring excellent pipes to market, have pretty consistent opinions on which carvers have really got "chops" and which carvers have just managed to find some particular sub-segment of a niche market to sell to. No one talks about it publicly, but if you get in a room with five professional pipemakers, they will quickly distinguish between makers who know how to carve pipes, and makers who have simply found some way to sell pipes. Generally speaking, I consider it a more legitimate indicator of design success to be included amongst the former. If marketability were always an indicator of excellence in one's craft, we wouldn't have to endure so many bad movies and so much terrible music. I'm not even sure Starbucks would exist! But I digress. Suffice it to say, "someone bought it" is NOT a suitable answer to the questions 'was it beautifully made? Was it an excellent design? Was it well executed?'"

____________________________________

I realize this may not be the most popular opinion, but I think it's necessary information for any aspiring professional pipe carver. Too often, I think a new carver is given a false sense of his abilities by a few early sales. Collectors jump to be the first on the Carver X bandwagon and end up damaging the carver in the process. If a carver is not allowed to develop somewhat organically without a would-be "taste maker" pushing his wares to all their collecting buddies, the carver will usually A) burn out fast and bright, or B) never fully develop to the level he aspires to. 

Early in my pipemaking career and after some early "successes"--by which I mean sales--I sold a pipe to Toren Smith, a very acquisitive and important collector at the time. When he received the pipe, he simply told me it was not up to standard, especially for the $300+ price tag. He wouldn't say more in an e-mail, preferring to critique the pipe in person when we saw one another at an upcoming pipe show. When we did, Toren systematically and very matter-of-factly obliterated this pipe as the ill-formed, improperly engineered, lump that it was. This is, perhaps, the most important thing that ever happened to me as an aspiring pipemaker--complete unadulterated failure.  So I picked up the pieces of my shattered pride, went back home and set to work at bringing my pipes to the point I thought they were already at. The following year, this finicky uber-critic proceeded to buy about a dozen of my pipes. That first failure and rejection hurt, but without it I would likely have been satisfied with the mediocrity I had achieved. 

A New Schule

I will start by saying that I credit my own teachers--especially Tom Eltang--for taking the time to help me develop my skills some ten or so years ago. This is not a process that took place over the course of an afternoon or weekend, but rather several years. Because of Tom's generosity, I feel and have felt a sense of obligation to share my own expertise with other aspiring carvers. Over the years, I've had the pleasure of working with and helping to supplement the skill sets of some very talented carvers, including Jeff Gracik, Brad Pohlmann, Adam Davidson, and Steve Morisette. These are guys who desperately wanted to learn, and to create. All of them had aspirations of becoming professional carvers--actually moving from hobbyists to working artists, and I would affirm that this is fundamentally different than simply wanting to make a few nice looking pipes each year.

Two rusticated Cutties. This is the first shape Tom ever taught me to make.

Love Geiger, a Swedish pipemaker who himself made his way from talented hobbyist to full-time professional recently said this about the journey.

" I believe that if you are serious about making pipes and really learning you will seek the live advice of a professional, by one on one interaction or spending the cash to visit them..

In this time we don't have the luxury of real apprenticeship, but just visiting a maker you look up to for a day or a few hours will grant so much more and give you a feeling what it takes and is like making pipes for a living.

So many have romantic dreams of "making it" and living off selling their smokable art but more have failed than succeeded in this, because it isn’t easy even with natural talent ect.
It requires discipline, luck, good connections and living on a tight budget for years for most of us. And even then there are no guarantees.

The sooner one gets a feeling of how it really is like " living with pipes" behind the glamour and $1000+ pipes they can set their goal on what level they would like to achieve and what they want to get out of it..Frustration and poverty is no fun... having a good hobby can be much more rewarding for most..

I know of very few if any professionals who have not in some way at some point visited other more experienced makers to learn.. I've done so a few times and intend to do so again as for me it is so inspiring and a kick in the butt to get productive.

Personally it took me 3 years of fooling around in the shop and wasting money on the "wrong" tools and methods before I finally did and even if it might cost you a plane ticket in the long run money could be saved.. "

I think there's great wisdom in what Love has to say here. Being a real live working artist is not easy. Those who imagine otherwise are simply delusional. It is a great blessing to make a living doing something that you love, but it requires sacrifice, often financial sacrifice, and far more dedication than most ever imagine. It also requires great skill, a very keen eye, and an understanding--innate or developed--of fundamental design principles. If you want to make pipes successfully you're going to have to develop these skills. This is not something that happens overnight, and it is not something that can happen simply by poking around on internet bulletin boards. 

New pipemakers are "made" by older pipemakers, not by self-important collectors, not by eBay, and not by themselves. In the Presbyterian church, an individual with a call to ministry is said to be "under the care" of his/her presbytery. This is a process that ensures an individual is provided with the necessary care, encouragement, wisdom, and example to succeed. I would advocate a similar model for aspiring pipemakers, and encourage other established pipemakers to engage in the process as tutors. 

Pipemaking is a dying art. In the past decade we have lost Sixten Ivarsson, Bo Nordh, and Jorn Micke. Poul Rasmussen has been gone for many years now. More recently Peter Hedegaard has died. Much of what is known and passed on about pipemaking lies in the hands and heads of masters who have been taught by masters. The only way for that knowledge to continue is to train new masters, and to that I am resolutely committed. 

Pure Joy

Eleanor Katherine Johnson

Born January 27, 2009

7lbs. 2 0z.

20 1/4" long.