Joe Hinkle

Joe Hinkle is a contemporary American pipemaker working in Indiana. He learned his craft not through a workshop tradition but through his own trial and error, later joining the Briarlab workshop in Indianapolis to pursue the work full time. His output falls under two headings: the classically styled Icon line and the more freely designed Marquee.

From Amateur to Workshop

Hinkle's first contact with the craft was a trial pipe made from a ready-made stummel kit; he bought the kit and vulcanite rod from Tim West, and finished the work with sandpaper, a file, and a power drill. Quickly recognizing the limits of this simple setup, he acquired a wood lathe and began working more methodically. Records indicate that he made about sixty pipes for people around him during this early period, then began supplying a few online retailers with his work.

The turning point came when he met the pipemaker Nate King at the NASPC pipe show held in Columbus. Since both lived in Indiana, the connection was easy to form; Hinkle began using King's workshop to sandblast his own pipes. This gave him his first chance to learn directly by observation and hands-on practice alongside another maker, and he spent much of his free time at that bench honing his shaping skills.

The Briarlab Years

Briarlab is a shared facility outfitted solely for pipemaking; Hinkle joined it as its first full-time member. Alongside King and Michael Lindner, having access to a professional machine shop and the accumulated experience of two seasoned makers allowed him to turn the craft from a side pursuit into his primary occupation. Records put his annual output at somewhere between one hundred and one hundred fifty pipes, a number that points to workshop-scale, single-maker production rather than series manufacturing.

Materials and Craftsmanship

The maker states that the briar blocks he uses come mainly from Italy, with some blocks sourced from Greece and Algeria as well. Mouthpieces are hand-cut from German vulcanite or acrylic rod; unless the design calls for it, an integrated connection with the stummel is preferred over a delrin tenon fitting. Surface finishes include plain polish, sandblasting, or a combination of the two; a rustic (textured) finish is not part of his repertoire.

On the shape side, the Icon series is devoted to measured interpretations of established English forms such as the billiard. The Marquee series, meanwhile, covers more finely worked designs where the pursuit of proportion and line comes to the fore. The coexistence of these two series is seen as an effort to pursue both classic molds and original shape experiments on the same bench.