JS Pipes (Joel Shapiro)

JS Pipes is the name of the small-scale handmade briar pipe bench run by American pipemaker Joel Shapiro in Rancho Cordova, California. The records do not state when the bench was founded; the period in which its name was heard was the 2000s. In these years Shapiro finished a small number of pipes and announced them without a middleman, through his own website. The bench is not active today, though exactly when activity ended is not known.

Approach to Making

The most-cited aspect of the bench is that it did not resort to fills for imperfections. Cracks or sand pits that appeared in the briar stummel were not masked with putty; the pipe was delivered along with the wood's own flaws. This preference is known both from surviving examples and from the maker's own promotional text. Staining was done with alcohol-based dyes, finished with only a thin coat of carnauba wax; the maker argued this method did not close the wood's pores and therefore did not affect the smoke. Where the briar came from (Greece, Italy, etc.), the mouthpiece material, and any shank extension were separately recorded for each pipe. Vulcanite, lucite, and cumberland are seen in the mouthpieces.

Shapes and Stamp

Surviving examples show that the bench moved back and forth between classic molds and free carving, that is, freehand lines. Among the pipes covered in restoration articles, a poker-bodied example fitted with a bamboo shank is described in detail: the bamboo is fitted to the stummel with a metal tenon, and stainless steel tubing is run through both ends of the smoke channel. Such a solution serves to keep the channel's cross-section constant despite bamboo's irregular internal structure, and exemplifies the bench's emphasis on the technical side of the work.

The stamp used, applied to the underside of the bowl, was the letters JSP. Alongside the letters, some examples carry a single-digit number, others a four-digit number. Secondary-market listings have interpreted the four-digit number as giving the year and that year's sequence number; this interpretation goes no further than dealer notes, and no numbering explanation attributable to the maker is known.

Tampers

The bench's only product besides pipes was hand-turned hardwood tobacco tampers. These tampers have their base cut at an angle rather than flat; the angled face leaves a small peak in the middle when pressing tobacco, said to help keep the ember alight without going out. Records indicate tampers were made to order in various sizes, sometimes from exotic woods as well.