Mickles

Mickles is the name given to the handmade pipes American craftsman Clarence Mickles produced alone in Park Forest, Illinois. Mickles carved pipes for more than thirty years, first in his spare time and, for the last five years or so of his life, full time; the exact year he began is not clear from the records. Most of the pipes he made carry the "MICKLES USA" mark on the shank along with the year of manufacture, so they can be dated individually.

A Repair Bench Before the Lathe

What first made Mickles known within the community was not pipe making but pipe rescuing. Starting his career as an auto mechanic gave him a manual skill for solving problems such as broken shanks, cracked bowls, and ill-fitting stems. That was the reason friends called him "Mechanic" and "Magician"; he is said to have restored cracked or split Dunhill bowls to usable condition. This repairman identity also gave its name to the article devoted to him in Pipes and Tobaccos magazine, titled "Pipe Mechanic."

Formal Approach

Large-volume bowls and deeply textured surfaces stand out in Mickles's pipes. For surface finishing he mainly used rustication and sandblasting, while preferring a smooth polished finish on briar blocks with clean grain. Among the shapes he produced were classic shapes such as bent egg, billiard, Rhodesian, and tulip, as well as freehand pieces. His own shape, which he called "Swan," stands apart from the rest of his output with its soft lines close to the Danish school; he is also known to have worked persistently on the hawkbill shape and developed it in his own interpretation. According to records, he also carved briar examples resembling corncob pipes in appearance.

Signature and Marks

The master's best-known mark is the white dots he placed on the stem. Some of his pipes have a single dot, some have two, and some have none at all; the number of dots is therefore not considered a reliable dating criterion on its own. It is reported that for a short period he also tried marks in the form of red and blue bars, though these are rarely seen. The most common identifier remains the shank stamp: the surname, the "USA" designation, and the four-digit year.

Place in the Community

Mickles was a regular member of the Chicagoland Pipe Collectors Club and often donated a pipe he had made to the club's raffles. He was a familiar face at the international pipe show held in Chicago; according to accounts he also set up a table at events in Indianapolis and Richmond, sometimes traveling to these along with his close friend Chuck Rio, known for the Castello collection. He died on August 10, 2001. Since no new Mickles pipes have been produced since, signed examples are seen today only in secondhand circulation.