Baier (Alfred Baier)

Baier is the name of the workshop American maker Alfred Baier ran alone in Vermont, and of the signature he stamped on his pipes. What set Baier apart from his contemporaries was his shape repertoire: on one side, figurative pipes carved entirely into a single body; on the other, freehand bodies achieved by hollowing out the wood. The scale was that of a studio, not a factory; pipes were made one at a time, to order.

From Carving to the Pipe

Baier's starting point was not pipemaking but wood carving; he carved as an amateur for years while smoking a pipe during the same period. By his own account, he combined the two pursuits in 1981, the year he entered a national pipe-carving competition and won first place. Also by his account, that same year the Confrérie des maîtres-pipiers in Saint-Claude, France, gave him an award for his craftsmanship; the town's place in the history of the briar pipe is described in the entry on the briar revolution. Both details rest on the maker's own account and have not been confirmed by independent records.

His name's standing in the pipe world owes something to his being covered in the book compiled by David Wright, former curator of the Museum of Tobacco Art and History in Nashville, on the world's pipemakers.

Shaping by Hand

Baier was self-taught and worked with a narrow toolkit: a band saw, a drill press, knives, a rasp, a file, and sandpaper of various grades. The rough outline was cut with the saw; everything else was finished by hand. Unlike a lathe-centered setup, this method makes it impossible from the outset for two pipes to be identical.

He used only plateau briar sourced from Greece as his block material, purifying and drying the blocks by a method of his own devising before beginning to work them. The finished surface was colored with a thin alcohol-based stain, then brought to a light sheen with a plant-based wax. Both vulcanite and lucite were used for mouthpieces; the difference between the two materials is covered in the entry on mouthpiece materials. His stamp was simple: the surname and year of manufacture were struck into the shank, which makes dating pieces relatively straightforward.

The Figurative Line

Baier's most-cited works are his figuratives. Some are built around a single head; animals such as bulldogs, wolves, and lions appear in this line alongside Abraham Lincoln, Sherlock Holmes, and a golfer. Others go beyond a portrait to depict a small scene: a squirrel leaping from a branch, a beaver gnawing at wood, a mermaid. The subject matter shows a clear kinship with nineteenth-century meerschaum carving; Baier's contribution is considered to be carrying that tradition's themes forward in a far harder, far less forgiving material.

Hollowed-Out Freehand Shapes

The second line is an openwork-like technique he applied to freehand bodies. Baier pierced the wood with channels and openings, leaving behind thin wooden bands connecting the chamber to the shank end, or the front of the chamber to the foot. Wherever possible, the block's unworked outer bark (plateau) was preserved on the back of these bands; the contrast between the rough bark and the polished surface is the main effect of the hollowed-out body. The shank area was often finished with carved curves, and the mouthpiece was shaped to carry that line through without a break.