Pipes by Cody Perkins

Pipes by Cody Perkins is a one-person pipe workshop operating in Edmonton, in Canada's province of Alberta. The brand name and the master's name amount to effectively the same thing: every stage from design to final polish comes from the same hand. The workshop is counted among the examples of independent North American pipe making that gained visibility in the 2010s.

The Workshop's Working Order

Production proceeds through individual burls on hand. Perkins does not start by choosing a shape but by weighing the material; only after assessing the size, outline, and grain texture of a briar burl is it decided which pipe that piece will become. Ordering the process this way means the workshop follows production that changes piece by piece rather than a fixed model catalog; since the grain pattern forms differently in every burl, no two pipes are exact copies of each other.

By the maker's own description, the workload divides into roughly three equal parts: about a third to the body, a third to the stem, and the rest to the finishing stage that turns the two parts into a matched whole. Stems are not chosen from ready-made rod; each is cut individually from German ebonite to suit its own body. Perkins used ready-made stems early in his career and has since abandoned the method entirely.

Materials

Bodies use Italian briar. Bands, accents, and ornamental work bring in natural materials such as horn, bone, and antler alongside exotic hardwoods, as well as brass and aluminum. Stem materials can include lucite, acrylic, and delrin alongside ebonite.

The workshop's two most emphasized choices are defined by negation: no filler putty, no bowl coating. Both methods are commonly used in pipe making to hide flaws in the burl; avoiding them requires accepting clean stock and a low production count.

The Maker's Professional Background

Perkins grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan, with access to a workshop belonging to a knife-making father. He is said to have begun producing his own knives at fourteen, selling them to hunting guides in the region, and to have soon become an apprentice to the machining trade he met in a high school shop class, going on to work as a journeyman machinist. His background in metalworking carried over into pipe making as a habit of precise measurement and tolerance.

His entry into pipes was not a planned career step but a friend's challenge. The first piece to come out of it was a plain billiard with a brass band fitted between the shank and the stem. The workshop's founding year is not clearly stated in records; the maker's name began to be mentioned in the North American pipe community from the mid-2010s, and during this period he appeared as a guest on a popular pipe publication's radio show.