Jared Coles

Jared Coles is an American pipe maker working in Visalia, California. He began his production first within a partnership, in a working arrangement built around consistency, and established an independent signature under his own name from the mid-2010s onward. His annual output is limited; each pipe is hand-shaped individually.

Learning Years and J&J Pipes

Coles's introduction to pipes reaches back to his youth. During his student years at UC Irvine, discovering online pipe communities shifted his curiosity from the consumer side to the maker's side; it was also through this route that he learned of artisan pipes.

He continued learning together with John Klose, whom he met in these same years. Records show the pair came together in 2009 and, in 2011, opened a joint workshop under the name J&J Pipes. The partnership's stated aim was for two hands working under the same name to turn out pipes consistent enough to be indistinguishable from one another. During this period the two occasionally took lessons from Jeff Gracik, founder of the J. Alan Pipes brand. Material sourcing, tool-making, and building a long-lasting pipe design were also among the subjects picked up during these years. The last pipes made under the J&J name were completed in December 2015; the partnership ended amicably, as the two makers sought their own artistic directions and weighed family priorities.

Production Under His Own Name

After the partnership, Coles began working independently to pursue his own aesthetic direction; going by his stamps, numbered production under his own name appears to have begun in 2016. The influence of the Japanese school is clearly visible in his shape language; he counts makers such as Hiroyuki Tokutomi and Gotoh among his main sources of inspiration. Alongside Gracik, Todd Johnson is also a guiding figure; through these two makers it could be said he has adopted a blend of Danish and Japanese making techniques.

Coles works in both classic pipe shapes and free designs. Saddle stems, along with two-tone treatments combining sandblasted and polished surfaces on a single bowl, are solutions that frequently appear in his production.

Material and Stamping

Long-cured Mediterranean briar is used for the bowls. Stems are, as a rule, hand-shaped from ebonite; other materials are used where the design calls for it. Decorative elements are kept minimal and chosen so as not to disturb the unity of the bowl.

The stamping layout is simple: every pipe carries the maker's logo, initials, and year of production. To these is added the sequence number within that year; a stamp reading "16-37," for instance, indicates the thirty-seventh pipe made in 2016. This layout is a traceability method common among small-scale production individually numbered, and makes later dating easier.