Nachwalter (Elliott Nachwalter Pipestudio)

Nachwalter is the brand under which American maker Elliott Nachwalter signs his handmade pipes under his own name. Trained in art history and photography, Nachwalter turned his profession into a craft and set up his workshop in Vermont. Though the brand runs today as a one-person studio, its name is still linked with the Briar Workshop, which served as a training ground in American handmade pipe history.

A Bench Set Up in Vermont

Nachwalter's first workshop was a small wooden structure fitted with a few basic tools in the town of Stowe in the late 1970s; sources give the founding year not as a fixed date but in relative terms such as "about twenty-five years ago." In these early years he briefly shared a shop in Stowe with Andrew Marks.

In the same period, the Briar Workshop was founded jointly with Jorg Jemelka, and the bench stopped being a solo pursuit. The involvement of Danish designer-maker Finn Meyan Andersen brought the workshop's freehand leanings into direct contact with the Danish School approach. Over the years, Brad Pohlmann, J. T. Cooke, and Carole Burns — craftspeople who would later become known under their own names — all worked there; in this sense the Briar Workshop is counted among the training benches of the American handmade pipe scene. Records show that some pipes from the workshop's period in Florida bear the "The Briar Workshop" stamp. It should be noted that the names Cooke and Burns also appear in sources as "Jim Cooke" and "Carol Burns."

The New York Years and a Hiatus

In 1980 Nachwalter opened a shop in New York; he designed and made pipes in the back of the shop, selling them straight to customers. Sources bracket this shop period as 1980–1983. What follows is a stretch when the maker set his craft aside, not making pipes for about three years. Pieces from these years carry "Pipeworks / New York City / USA" on one side of the shank and a personal stamp indicating handmade work on the other.

The Studio on the Battenkill

In the autumn of 1996 Nachwalter set up a small studio in southern Vermont, on the banks of the Battenkill River, ringed by the Taconic and Green Mountains. Known as Pipestudio, this workshop is where the brand still produces today. The briar blocks used come from Italy and Greece; vulcanite, acrylic, and cumberland are the preferred mouthpiece materials. The maker notes that working with well-rested blocks shortens the break-in period.

Scale is not what defines the output — individuality is: since the grain comes out differently in every block, the design is determined by the block itself; this is why the brand is known for pieces that are never identical to one another. Nachwalter describes his own work as making a sculptural object that never loses its function. The pipes' distinguishing mark is a small emblem resembling a six-pointed star set on the mouthpiece; collectors weigh this mark together with the shank stamps, which change over time, when dating a piece.