Old Nellie Pipes: Joe Nelson's Wisconsin Workshop

Old Nellie Pipes is the name Joe Nelson gives to the pipes he makes by hand at his workshop in a farmhouse in Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, in the United States. Nelson came to pipes as a craftsman at the end of a long life spent with wood; for that reason his brand reads less as a factory tradition than as the story of a one-man bench.

From Carpentry to the Bench

Nelson's introduction to briar dates to 2005; at that point pipes became the latest addition to the list of pursuits of a craftsman with more than forty years of woodworking behind him. His attending the major pipe gathering in Chicago is cited as the turning point that turned this interest into ongoing production; over time Nelson made both instrument-making and pipe making his full-time work.

The experience built up in earlier years came from two directions. Nelson made custom cabinets and furniture semi-professionally, and renovated the 120-year-old farmhouse he lives in with his own hands. He turned to stringed-instrument making (luthiery) in 1995, and at the start of 1998 fitted out his workshop for this work and began building and repairing instruments. His focus on steel-string acoustic guitars is the source of the measurement-and-finish sensibility that later carried over into his pipes.

Craftsmanship and Signature

Old Nellie pipes are known, in trade records and estate listings, for their sharp lines, the precise transition between shank and mouthpiece, and clean finishes. This precision is traced to the millimeter-tight fit habits of guitar making. Nelson's most recognized detail is the iridescent mother-of-pearl (abalone) inlay he sets into the mouthpiece — another technique borrowed directly from instrument making. Among mouthpiece materials, such inlays carved into hard rubber count as both a signature and a mark of craftsmanship.

Production revolves around the classic English-American repertoire. Examples circulating on the market include billiard, lovat, dublin, brandy, and bulldog shapes. In terms of finish, smooth, sandblasted, and rustic surfaces have all been used; sandblasting, as with many American makers, has been one Nelson turns to often, in step with the rise of the American sandblasting school in the 2000s.

Stamps and Scope

Pipes are stamped "Old Nellie Pipes." Three-letter codes accompanying the pipes appear in dealer records; while these seem to indicate surface and grade distinctions, no complete grading table explained by the maker is known. Because production rests on a one-man workshop, annual numbers are limited, and the pipes have circulated mainly through American pipe gatherings and a handful of specialty dealers.

Old Nellie is less a brand that has achieved wide fame than a typical American example of the artisan pipe approach: small-scale production that emerged from a maker coming from another craft applying the hand discipline he acquired there to briar.