DSH Pipes (David S. Huber)

DSH Pipes is the one-man workshop of American maker David S. Huber, working in Durham, North Carolina, signed with the initials of his own name. Every stage, from design to final polish, passes through the same hands; no assistant is employed at the workshop.

The Road to the Workshop

The first pursuit that connected Huber to pipes was not production but collecting: according to records, after buying his first pipe in 2006, he collected pieces for years, examining the shape approach of different schools along the way. His own first attempts date to around 2010; the initial setup consisted of a few briar blocks, ready-made mouthpiece rods, and a handful of files. In 2012 he acquired a lathe and set up his first regular workspace in his Chicago apartment, counting February of that year as the start of the work. Moving to Durham in 2014 marked a turning point; he left his stage-design profession and moved into pipe making full time.

The workshop is today housed within the Liberty Arts sculpture studio and foundry in Durham; Huber works there as a guest artist. His running his lathe at the studio's events and showing the shaping and sanding stages to visitors has also been the subject of the studio's own announcements. It is also on record that he gives short monthly introductory lessons in pipe making at the same location.

Shape Philosophy and Material

Huber's work leans closer to hand-shaped free forms than to classic English molds; he is considered one of the contemporary American interpreters of the freehand approach within the community. It is noted that his designs combine the Danish school's flowing line sense with the attention to detail of Japanese makers. However free the shape, technical requirements such as hole alignment, airway, and draw are prioritized.

On the material side, he favors Italian and Greek briar. Mouthpieces are not bought ready-made; they are generally hand-cut and shaped from German-made ebonite rod, with bakelite and soft acrylic used occasionally as well. His most successful pieces are set apart in a top grade named "Bull"; this mark is stated to have first been used at the 2019 West Coast Pipe Show.

Mentors, Awards, and Recognition

Huber has drawn on more than one workshop on his path to mastery. Among the names he cites as having contributed to his development are Jeff Gracik, Premal Chheda, Alex Florov, and Nanna Ivarsson. After a period spent with Gracik in 2018, he traveled to Denmark for a few weeks, where he found the opportunity to work at the benches of makers such as Tom Eltang and Joao Reis.

Fair results have also made his name known. He won first place in a juried carving competition held in Kansas City in 2013, and took the "best pipe of the show" award at the same city's fair in 2015 and at the West Coast Pipe Show in Las Vegas in 2019. His work has been featured multiple times in the field's periodicals, and was the subject of a long feature piece in summer 2017. In this respect, DSH Pipes is counted among the examples of the young American artisan generation that has come to the fore since the 2010s.