Penguin Briar

Penguin Briar is a small-scale pipe workshop run by Kim Kendall in Phoenix, Arizona, United States. Production is carried out not on a series-manufacturing basis but through a method in which every piece is shaped by hand, one at a time. The brand's founding year is not on record; the workshop's known story begins with Kendall's attempt to make a pipe for her own use.

Learning Process

When Kendall took up pipe making, she had a modest collection of eleven pipes from different brands. For her first attempts she chose the path requiring the least investment: acquiring ready-drilled briar blocks and shaping them with a rotary tool and sandpaper. After the first two pipes were finished, it became clear that the technical side of the work was heavier than it looked; she then sought out formal training. Starting with a ready-drilled block, avoiding the investment in a lathe and drilling rig, is a common starting method among new makers wanting to get into the craft; because the position of the chamber and the smoke channel is predetermined, only shaping the outer form and finishing are left to the maker.

She received her training in the pipe-making classes occasionally held by Paul Hildebrand of the Pipe Makers Emporium. The classes covered internal geometry, the alignment of the hole between body and mouthpiece (stem), the manufacturing sequence, and surface finishing techniques. Through the same circle, Kendall also met Horace DeJarnett, another well-known pipe maker in the region. It is known that, guided by the two, she focused her work on the basic structure of pipe making before moving on to showier shapes.

Phoenix Workshop Circle

Since Penguin Briar took shape as a pursuit carried on alongside a full-time job, most of the production is squeezed into weekends. Several of Hildebrand's former students, along with DeJarnett, gather on most Saturday mornings at Hildebrand's workshop; this group jokingly calls itself "Spit-n-Whittle," and Kendall is part of this circle. Such regular gatherings are a common arrangement in American handmade pipe-making tradition: a strict master-apprentice relationship is replaced by loose workshop communities where tools and experience are shared. Access to bench equipment that a lone maker cannot easily obtain, such as a belt sander, is also often secured through these shared workshops.

Products

The workshop's product range consists of two main lines. The first is the handmade briar pipes marketed under its own name. The second is beginner-level making kits aimed at those new to pipe making; the manufacturer's own site has a separate section for these kits. This second line takes the workshop beyond being just a maker of finished products and turns it into an example that opens its own path of learning to others as well. No particular shape-numbering system, nor a stamping system documented in detail, is on record. In this respect, Penguin Briar is a typical example of American workshop pipe making, resting not on a cataloged production line but on the unhurried output of a single person.