Ian Fisher

Ian Fisher (b. 1965) is an American handmade pipe maker, based in New York, who carries on pipe making alongside his career in journalism. That he took up the craft as he neared fifty, without stepping away from writing, sets him apart from most makers of his generation. The pipes he produces are stamped with his own surname.

The Journalism Track

After graduating from Boston University in 1987, Fisher began his journalism career at The Lowell Sun in Massachusetts. He joined The New York Times in 1990, moved into reporting in 1992, and worked at the paper for a total of about twenty-seven years. A long stretch of that time was spent as a bureau chief: East Africa, based in Nairobi, from 1998 to 2001; Eastern Europe and the Balkans from 2001 to 2004; Rome from 2004 to 2008. Because many of his postings turned into conflict zones within a short time, war reporting was added to his beat as well. He left the paper in 2017; a stint at Bloomberg that began the following year ran through 2024, and he returned to the Times in 2026.

The Connection to Pipes

A cigarette smoker at first, and a cigar smoker during his years posted in Africa, Fisher switched to the pipe in his thirties and described it as a habit that kept him grounded under field conditions. For a long time he made do with cheap factory pipes bought from tobacconists' baskets. As the story is told, that habit changed when he came across a never-smoked Dunhill at a scrap dealer's in Baghdad during the Iraq War years; the difference between that pipe and what he had been using until then is counted as the start of his interest in the craft of making one.

Records show he finished his first pipe in 2016 from a hobby kit signed by Mark Tinsky. Once he left the paper, the time he devoted to it grew: he taught himself by following home-scale pipe-making guides, step-by-step videos, and pipe-maker forums, and gradually built up his bench equipment. For a while the pursuit carried no aim of income; requests to buy from people around him then brought in the idea of putting the work up to someone else's judgment.

He then sought direct instruction. As the account goes, he worked at Grant Batson's workshop in Indiana, learning freehand carving and various stages of the craft, and in later years attended classes with Jeff Gracik, maker of the J. Alan pipe. Through these two names he is counted as connected to the teaching line running back to Sixten Ivarsson and Poul Rasmussen, and from there to Tom Eltang and Teddy Knudsen — that is, to the American extension of the Danish School tradition.

Style and Materials

His main materials are briar and vulcanite; basing his mouthpieces on hard rubber is the usual preference of the tradition he belongs to. His design avoids showiness, favoring balanced proportions and a simplicity that sits well in the hand. By contrast, bamboo shank extensions, ferrules, and accents of horn, fossil ivory, or exotic hardwood appear frequently in his output; he has said he uses these both to push himself and because buyers favor them. In finishing, he offers both smooth polish and sandblasting.

The main direction of his style comes from the Scandinavian and Scandinavian-American line. His portfolio includes both well-known shapes of that tradition and less commonly worked examples: a quarter-bent egg, a strawberry, and, alongside Arne Jacobsen, Ib Loran's Pearl and Gert Holbek's Polonius can be counted among them. Italian pipes, particularly the work of Paolo Becker and his son Federico, are named among the makers that caught his interest early on; Gian Maria Gamboni, whom he met while posted in Rome, is another name from that period. English classics also find an occasional place in his repertoire.

Although his production stays at boutique scale, his pipes have reached a steady circle of buyers in America. According to the account, in 2024 he was asked to make the pipe of the year for the Sherlock Holmes Pipe Club of Boston. Fisher today continues to split his time between the workshop and journalism.