Christie Pipes

Christie Pipes is the name of the American pipes Eric C. Christie makes one by one in the town of Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. The brand rests not on a series-production factory but on the workshop behind a family shop: Christie both makes pipes carrying his own name and takes on repair work for other workshops and shops. He made his name chiefly through this second line of work, carrying the reputation earned in the repair shop over to his own pipes.

The Apprenticeship Years

Christie's mentor was Richard C. Johnson, a senior figure in American pipe-making. Records indicate Johnson began making pipes in 1939 at Weber Pipe Co., founded by Carl Weber in Jersey City, New Jersey, and later settled in rural Pennsylvania, opening his own shop, Johnson's Pipe Shop, in Carlisle in the 1960s. How long Christie spent at this workshop is inconsistent across sources: Pipedia says three years in the early 1980s, while the maker's own website says four years in the mid-1980s. Where the two accounts agree is that the training took the form of an almost unbroken bench schedule, six days a week.

After his apprenticeship, Christie's day job kept him away from pipe-making for a while; he nonetheless continued taking special orders and repairs for his father's pipe and tobacco shop in Waynesboro. Since his output during these years stayed confined to a single bench and a single storefront, pipes carrying his signature did not travel far beyond a narrow circle of customers. The founder's name appears in sources sometimes as Eric C., sometimes as Eric E. Christie.

Opening Outward and How the Workshop Runs

According to the story told, what expanded the business was a referral: a former customer who had moved to another city asked Christie to take on repair work for the shop in his new town as well. Pipedia and the manufacturer's website agree that the workshop opened its repair service and handmade pipes to other shops in 1995; this has not been confirmed by an independent business record. After this date, a local bench operation, however narrow its circle, turned into a name recognized across the country.

The workshop's way of working is a typical example of the artisan-pipe-versus-factory-pipe distinction: pipes are not made in series but mostly one at a time, often with a particular customer in mind, spanning a wide range from plain classic shapes to freehand work. Tasks such as mouthpiece cutting and body repair show that mouthpiece work is kept as a separate specialty within the workshop.

The Briar Used

According to its official promotional material, the workshop works with various batches of Mediterranean-sourced briar. These include Algerian briar said to have rested since the 1940s, and plateau briar kept in stock since the mid-1990s. Working with long-cured wood is one of the classic advantages small workshops claim over factories; since such stock claims cannot be independently verified, they should be reported as the manufacturer's own statement.

Sources give different streets for the shop's location within Waynesboro; the mismatch between the old Pipedia entry and the addresses given on the current official site points to the business having moved over time. Christie's name is counted today among those carrying on America's small-scale, master-to-apprentice tradition within the global network of briar makers.