Mariner (Joe Mariner)

Mariner is the American workshop Joe Mariner opened in Napa, California in 1972, known for its freehand pipes. The workshop never turned into a factory: in 1974 annual output stood at around two hundred pipes, sold wholesale to a handful of tobacconists on the West Coast and in Chicago. Even so, the Mariner name became one of the most award-laden signatures of the American handmade pipe scene by the mid-1980s.

The Napa Years and Awards

The awards that made the maker's name span a short period. In 1980 he was voted Pipe of the Year at the Pipe Collectors Expo in San Francisco; in 1984, at the first congress of the Pipe Collectors International (PCI) association in Chattanooga, he won the title of Best American Pipe Maker, and at the second congress the following year he took both the Best Briar Freehand and Best Maker awards. At the national pipe shows held in 1986 and 1987 he was voted Best Maker and Best Freehand respectively. The judging in 1984 was done by twenty masters attending the congress, and in 1985 by retailers. At that same 1984 congress, Mariner was also among the first eight people PCI referred to as "kapnismologists" (pipe experts).

In these years the pipes were distributed through a network of shops running from Drucquer & Sons in Berkeley and Oakland to Iwan Ries & Co. in Chicago; tobacconists in San Francisco, Mill Valley, Sacramento, Fresno, Anaheim, and Los Angeles were also part of this network. According to the record, the first retailer to stock the maker's work was Drucquer & Sons in 1973. In 1980 a batch of freehand pipes reached a major tobacconist in Tokyo, where they were displayed alongside Dunhill and a Danish maker's pipes; it is said that exchange rates and Japan's import restrictions prevented this connection from turning into a lasting relationship.

Briar Importing

Wanting an uninterrupted supply of good material for his workshop, Mariner began buying briar by the ton in 1976; further large shipments followed in 1979, 1982, 1983, and 1985. A significant portion of the incoming material was passed on wholesale, in unopened and unsorted sacks, to other makers running limited production. From this flowing stock, the maker set aside large and unusually shaped blocks for his own production. He states that he air-cured the briar he used in his own hands for three to six years, and attributes his tight, flawless-grained pipes to this seasoning.

Mariner Classics

In 1987 both pipe production and briar importing were suspended; the maker had turned to computer systems design and programming. His large remaining stock allowed him, after a gap of over a decade, to offer pipes directly to collectors again. The wood behind this return, the Mariner Classics line, does not come from the workshop's own importing but from a chain of transfer that had waited a quarter century. Rocco Cuttri, who ran a small workshop on Battery Street in Brooklyn for over thirty years, left thousands of half-finished chambers to Bud Ford when he retired in the late 1950s; Ford finished these under the Trade Winds brand and stocked his shop in Sacramento almost entirely with these pipes. When Ford also gave up the business in 1982, the remaining more than a hundred dozen chambers passed to Joe Mariner. Having resisted producing standard-mold shapes for years, the maker changed his mind when faced with wood this well-aged.

Stamp and Coding System

The freehand pipes are signed, dated, and coded. The first letter of the code indicates which batch the wood came from: E denotes 1976, F and L denote 1979, K denotes the 1982 purchase; the letters HS mark a very old ebauchon batch dating back to the years of the Second World War. The letters that follow list the pipe's features — bridged shank, cocobolo shank or ring, lucite mouthpiece, vertically cut block, mouthpiece finishing flush with the shank. The trailing numbers give the pipe's sequence within its own series. In the Classics line, the number instead gives the piece's position within the total number to be made of that shape; a silver band or a rosewood ring may be added to the shank, and the mouthpiece is made of acrylic or hard rubber. The freehand examples, with their mirror-polished surfaces and asymmetric lines, are considered distinctive pieces of American craftsmanship of the era.