Paul Becker (Paulpipes)

Paul Becker is a German pipe maker running a one-man workshop in Pinneberg, about twenty kilometers northwest of Hamburg. He has signed his pipes for some time under the name Paulpipes, by his own account to avoid confusion. There are other makers in the pipe world who share his surname; he has no connection to Fritz Becker or Paolo Becker.

From Behind the Counter to the Lathe

Becker's life story rests largely on his own account and has no chronology backed by official records. According to this account, he was born in Pinneberg in January 1947; his family ran a tobacconist shop in the town. After finishing a two-year business school in Hamburg and completing an apprenticeship in trade, he entered the family business, and in 1970 took over the shop together with his wife, Erika. He had started smoking a pipe at sixteen; he says he had wanted to make his own pipes since youth, and that the names he took as examples were masters of the Danish School.

The turn came in 1982. The purpose of the first workshop he set up in his home's basement was not production but being able to repair, on the spot, broken mouthpieces and similar minor faults brought in by customers to the shop. Becker recounts that German master Rainer Barbi played a large part in equipping the workshop, and that the suggestion not to stop at repair but to try making himself a pipe also came from him; he says he learned the technique directly by watching at Barbi's bench. This mentoring relationship has not been confirmed by an independent source. His first freehand pipe dates from this period. Given the interest shown by shop customers, he kept his own pipes on the counter for eight years alongside the rest; in 1990 he closed the shop and moved to full-time pipe making.

Craftsmanship and Finishes

Every stage of a Paulpipes pipe passes through a single pair of hands: from freehand drilling in the block to coarse and fine sanding, from coloring to the bowl-coating layer and the hand-shaped mouthpiece, the maker does every job himself. There is no varnish on the surface; shine is given with carnauba wax. Mouthpieces are cut thin enough to sit comfortably against the teeth. The color range is limited to three tones, though the naming of these tones varies from source to source: tones referred to in older promotional texts as natural, orange, and warm brown appear in current material as light orange, dark, and warm brown.

Becker emphasizes that he uses no putty filler in his briar blocks. Small marks (spots) coming from the wood's own texture are not noticeable in use; they only determine which grade the pipe falls into. Both filtered and unfiltered pipes come out of the workshop. Filtered models have a removable insert machined to size, so that the same pipe can also be smoked without a filter.

Removable Shank Section

The maker's own best-known solution is the pipe whose shank has a removable middle section. With the spacer in place, the pipe is used like a long-stemmed churchwarden; once the piece is removed, it drops to the ordinary length. The bowl of this model is shaped either round or faceted; Becker states that he does not keep the design fixed, but tries to push it a little further each time.

Production scale is small, and the figure given varies by source: current information puts output at around a hundred pipes a year from the workshop, while older material gives the figure as two hundred fifty.