The Price of Artisan Pipes

[Anonymous]

There really aren't too many artisans turning out archetypal English shapes that are well cut and beautifully proportioned. Several every now and then. But it also seems to me that the market, or at least the high grade market, is craving exotic shapes and exotic materials.

I think (to the extent that anybody cares) that it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

One guy I had really high hopes for (from a distance) was Will Purdey. He came so close to perfection with many of his earlier ones that you could see (or at least I imagined I could see) that his deviations from the beaux ideal shapes he started out from were done in a spirit of playfulness.

But it seems (and I wasn't there, so I don't know) that the guys with the plentiful long green were used to flying snails and reverse volcanic pigs feet . . .

:face:

 

[beetlejazz]

Actually, there's a lot of beautiful, balanced curved shapes in male bodies too, and not only the young and fit ones. You learn this if you take figure drawing classes. 8) Actually I've had my best drawing moments drawing a slightly plump man in his late 60's. Sadly it's apparently really hard for teachers to find older men who would be willing to pose in a class.

I would totally agree that shapes and lines similar to those in human bodies are attractive. They look balanced. Every time there's a direction, a curve, a line, there's something responding to it. Heck, perhaps drawing/sculpting nudes would be great exercise for aspiring pipe makers.

(sorry for a slight threadjack)

 

[Anonymous]

Men don't look at men. And women only look at them when they're either sizing them up or up to something.

Women are where everyone's attention converges.

:face:

 

[Harlock999]

Men don't look at men. And women only look at them when they're either sizing them up or up to something.

Women are where everyone's attention converges.

:face:

True!
Non photogenic musicians realized many years ago that putting a pretty girl on a record cover sold many more units than if they had put their own mugs on the cover...


The Ramonetures was my friend's idea. The music of the Ramones, as if played by The Ventures. Davey Allen of 60's biker movie soundtrack fame plays on it!

 

[beetlejazz]

Men don't look at men. And women only look at them when they're either sizing them up or up to something.

Women are where everyone's attention converges.

:face:

True!
Non photogenic musicians realized many years ago that putting a pretty girl on a record cover sold many more units than if they had put their own mugs on the cover...

Empahis mine.

Pretty people sell. Although here in West we're way behind in appreciating a beautiful male, compared to Japan at least. There's a whole hugely popular genre of rock-bands that's centered around the image of a beautiful, richly decorated, androgynous man. It's became a huge export, and quickly - obviously something has been lacking here. And at the same time both young girls and their mothers go crazy over Twilight, that apparently repeats over and over again how the male protagonist is "so beautiful". We're living interesting times, there's a whole huge soup of female desire for men boling on the internet (= practically all fan-fiction), and it will be incredibly interesting to see what sort so things we didn't know will rise to the surface. 8)

 

[Anonymous]

Me? I'll stick with my skinny/smaller subtle curves 1/8 bends. Why this makes sense on that scale, I have no idea. Or, maybe I do.

With the exception of bent bulldogs (that have to be bent), the maximum bend in any Yak pipe is 1/16. And it's an anomaly in an otherwise (pardon the expression) "straight world."
:lol!:

:face:

 

[Kyle Weiss]

Heh. 1/16th bends are cool. Just trying to be straight? :scratch: :lol:

-------------------------

Here it is spring, and everyone's talking about doin' it again.

By "it," of course I was strictly referring to going out and spending time with your favorite pipe however you see fit.

Not sure what the rest of you were thinking.



8)

 

[Anonymous]

Hooray ! Hooray !
The first of May !
Outdoor _____ing
Begins today !

:face:

 

[Kyle Weiss]

:lol!: :lol!: :lol!: :lol!: :lol!:

 

[beetlejazz]

You must mean Lunt...ing? :lol!:

 

[Anonymous]

Yep. That's the word I was looking for.

Lunting 8)

:face:

 

[Rad Davis]

And at the same time both young girls and their mothers go crazy over Twilight

And Justin Bieber. :twisted:

Rad

 

[Anonymous]

When Mrs. Yak was 13, it was Donnie Osmond.

She grew out of it.

I wonder if people just stopped growing up since then ?

Or at least slowed way down. :scratch:

:face:

 

[Kyle Weiss]

When Mrs. Yak was 13, it was Donnie Osmond.

She grew out of it.

Probably just as well, I think Marie knew she wasn't going to do much better, anyway. :mrgreen:

 

[Anonymous]

Value is purely subjective. One man's fair is another man's greedy and the other's cheap. What greed is depends entirely on your point of view.

FULL DISCLOSURE : CURMUDGEON RAP AHEAD.

Meh . . .

The curse of the XX Century : Everybody's an "authority' because "everything's relative." And the further out on the "art" limb, the more "true" that is supposed to be.

Well, no it isn't. The Soccer Mom watching her kid play entertains a much higher opinion of him than the coach probably does.

There are bars that need to be surmounted in any handcraft, and always have been. The machine age has only enforced them more universally by making accurate productions more readily available to more people at cheaper prices.

Round shanks want to be uniformly round along their lengths. Tapered or parallel, you want to be able to hold the pipe with the stem facing the light source and see a uniformly straight reflection of it as you rotate the stem. Lathes do that. Which means, if you don't have one, you've got to be able to do it by hand and eye. It's not some great accomplishment, either.

It gets stickier with oval shanks. Much stickier. And when you go to diamond shanks (bulldogs for example), on any pipe that claims to even have even a passable level of workmanship (let alone quality as "art"), the base-line standard is four dead-flat surfaces of uniform width, meeting in four dead straight lines. No dips, no wobbles, no fudging. Then there's Master-level stuff, like the way the shank meets (or doesn't) the bowl without compromising the integrity of either beyond a necessary minimum.

IOW, the same set of standards that Ben Wade, Charatan and the rest of them owed their positions to consistently meeting and transcending.

It can be stickier yet with stems (and with some bowl shapes), but you get my drift.

Meet that set of minimal standards, every time, and you can begin to figure you're at least in contention as an Artist-level craftsman. Substitute creative ways of evading it (and a lot of later XX Century commercially-successful production-shop pipe shapes were probably designed with this in mind), rusticate or sandblast pretty much everything you turn out to hide the evidence, and, except for drilling, mortising & stemming, you're one of the cast of hundreds competing with machine work without meeting machine standards.

Can you still carve out a niche doing that ? Sure. Look around. Pipes have become the new Cigars, and a rising tide lifts all boats. It's a great time to be getting your chops honed.

But I wouldn't be resting easy if I were, no matter how many . . . Nah. That would just annoy more people than just pipemakers. Suffice it that "in the judgment of history" (if we luck out and there is one), some of the names in the current consensus rankings will be replaced by others not currently held in universal, over-arching esteem.

(As a first-time NEW pipe customer, I'm voting with my $$. Stay tuned for that).

Ever hear of Spohr, Hummel, Cherubini, Weber or Meyerbeer ? In the 1830s, they were bigger deals than Beethoven.

Hot air balloons are no new phenomenon in the arts.

:face:

 

[Sasquatch]

And fat, lumpy, and poorly shaped became the new "handmade".

 

[Anonymous]

Bottom Line :

IMO, I suspect "emerging makers" (and the more impressionable among their clients) are persuaded that they're in competition with the pipes (and makers) at the center of the buzz created by the Buzzmeisters (less charitably, the Hot Air Balloon. Not so much that they aren't often astute judges, but they're fatally prone to Band-Wagoning enthusiasms).

Granted, "give the public what it wants" (or thinks it does) is never a bad business strategy.

But again IMO, they aren't. The pipes they're really in competition with are marked "Savinelli." And even "Genuine Imported Briar." People who do that, and clearly come out on top, have my undivided attention.

To the extent that anybody cares (if any).

:face:

 

[dshpipes]

And fat, lumpy, and poorly shaped became the new "handmade".

Exactly. I can't help but wonder if it would be helpful to separate current "artisan" work into a few categories. To start, I think the type of pipe you describe above may be categorized as "folk art."

Folk art is affordable and offers a personal relationship between the buyer and the maker, however work in this category doesn't necessarily achieve high level standards.

Then I think we enter the world of craftsman, where high level standards are met with rigid consistency. Beautiful lines on simple and classic designs abound from makers like this.

Next is the world of "artisan," which I think a lot of people who are making "folk art" are eager to enter but fall short of. I'll purport up the definition of "artisan" to be any maker who produces work which consistently achieves very high standards of engineering and workmanship while being highly creative. Beautiful shapes abound, both classic and freehand.

Personally, I place craftsmen and artisans on the same plane, acknowledging that each may have different end goals but achieving them by using the same standards of excellence.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Kyle Weiss]

And fat, lumpy, and poorly shaped became the new "handmade".

Yep. <img class="emojione" alt="?" title="" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/emojione/assets/png/1f192.png?v=2.2.7"/> ...but...

I can't help but wonder if it would be helpful to separate current "artisan" work into a few categories. To start, I think the type of pipe you describe above may be categorized as "folk art."

Next is the world of "artisan," which I think a lot of people who are making "folk art" are eager to enter but fall short of. I'll purport up the definition of "artisan" to be any maker who produces work which consistently achieves very high standards of engineering and workmanship while being highly creative.

...then there's this--separate-but-equal categories will naturally separate. It's always a worry with artistry traditionalists that a trend will trounce the tried and true (stupid alliteration I left in, sorry) and it will always be that way. Fortunately, pipes are not usually disposable, and if someone manages to get their hands on a few classics, even if they become hard-to-find, they also will be less desirable if what concerns I'm gathering are at their worst.

It all works out in the end. Always has.

Just imagine what the future "oldschool" artistry-style pipe aficionados will say in 30 years when the next thing with pipes comes along.

Good old fart rant, though, Yak. :cheers: I approve. Quality and approach being the biggest concerns overall.

 

[Anonymous]

Meh . . .

They'll still be around, of course. The way "leisure suits," fedoras, Pedal Pushers, Danish Modern furniture & a million other "styles" are. There will be people who think they were cool & collect them along with tube radios, vintage cars &c.

When they finally show up in the History of Previously Cool Stuff books, I think they'll be between Lava Lamps & Andy Warhol Marylins.

By which point a Rad Davis, Ser Jac or Savielli G'd'Oro billiard will be like a vintage Martin guitar -- sought not only for its beauty & rarity in great condition, but because it's performance, after years of breaking in, will be off the charts.

:face: