Paul Tatum (Tatums Workshop)

Paul Tatum is an American handmade pipe maker who signs his pipes with the Tatums Workshop stamp. His total output has stayed small in number, but he has carved out a distinct place in the American artisan pipe scene through the mouthpieces he casts himself and the detailed carving he applies to the body surface. The distinguishing mark that identifies his work from a distance is a glass eye embedded in the back of the mouthpiece.

Mouthpiece Casting and the Eye Mark

Tatum's most technically distinctive feature was that he cast his own mouthpieces rather than cutting them from ready rod. He would mix the resin by hand, adding in additives such as amber particles or shredded tobacco; because amber's density is close to that of the mixture, the particles would stay suspended rather than settling to the bottom. The real problem was air bubbles trapped in the mix. By his own account, he cured the piece in a pressure vessel at around 90 psi (roughly 6 bar), keeping the gas dissolved in solution so that no bubble marks were left on the surface. His best-known pattern was the flame motif: flame-shaped channels were cut into a partially turned mouthpiece, liquid resin was pressed into the channels, and the piece was then turned again; every additional color meant repeating the process from the start. For the general properties of such materials, see the mouthpiece materials entry.

The glass eye he set into the back of the mouthpiece — of the type used in taxidermy — served both as a signature and as a grade marker; set with epoxy into a socket opened with a fine tip, it could be picked out from a distance, letting the quality grade be read at a glance. On recorded examples, the stamp consists of the Tatums Workshop name alongside a grade name and a number; a gold-colored eye set into a green cast mouthpiece, along with gold-banded pieces, are among the known examples.

Surface Work

Rustication is most often treated in the pipe world as a quick way to salvage a body with weak or flawed grain; Tatum, by contrast, treated it as a design field in its own right. The series named after Lovecraft's "Shoggoth" creature was, according to accounts, introduced on the author's birthday for several years running: the body was carved in graduated tiers narrowing from coarse to fine, then lightly sandblasted, painted black, and polished to a high shine with natural shellac. In the semi-rustic surface he called "Egyptian Leather," the same tiered carving, sandblasting, and polishing are used together; the balance here is delicate, because if the carving goes too deep the polishing wheel cannot erase the tool marks, and if it stays too shallow the surface looks unfinished. In a third method, the tip of a small circular saw was touched to the body at a fixed angle and at random points, producing an artificial texture independent of the briar's actual grain. A two-tone paint, one shade worked into the recesses and the other wiped from the surface, made the pipe change color depending on the angle of view. For a general term for these surfaces, see the surface finishes entry.

Background of the Bench

Information on Tatum's personal background rests largely on his own statements; there is no independent record. According to this, he was born in Atlanta, moved with his family to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, at eleven, and his interest in pipes began in his teenage years in the early 1980s. He never received formal apprenticeship training; makers he met at pipe shows, books, and internet forums served as his source of learning. His closest exchange was with Trever Talbert, who set up his own business around the same time; because both favored a wide smoke channel, they smoked each other's test pipes in pursuit of a shared standard. Tatum says this pursuit drew on the fluid mechanics he knew through his profession. For how this debate has played out within the community, see the airflow entry.

While studying mechanical engineering at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, he went to class in the mornings and spent his afternoons at the bench. He began production by making tobacco tampers; as his skill grew, his focus shifted to pipes, and by his own account pipe making became his main occupation in 2004. Again by his own statement, he graduated in 2006, moved to Alabama, and began working at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center; he states that he worked as a structural designer on the Ares I rocket and on International Space Station components, later moving into station flight-controller work. The exact title is inconsistent across sources: one retailer summary describes him as a materials engineer. After the move, he made only a few pipes; production effectively stopped.