Prohibition Pipes

Prohibition Pipes (formally Prohibition Co.) is a small-scale pipe workshop run by American wood craftsman Jonathan Lavezzo in the state of Virginia, USA. Work leaving the bench is announced in batches, and the maker reports that a significant share of it remains one-off. The brand is not a continuation of Moonshine Pipe Company, which the same maker had earlier founded and built up, but a separate chapter opened after that business changed hands.

A Background in Wood and the Moonshine Years

Lavezzo came to pipe making after more than twenty years of work in wood and burl. As a student he ran a small business in his home town of Fairfax, Virginia, building fences and cages; he later founded a renovation company focused on restoring old houses and hardwood flooring. Records indicate he turned to pipe making in the early 2010s, after meeting a briar pipe maker.

This interest soon grew into the business known as Moonshine Pipe Company. Accounts describe the brand as founded in Charlottesville, in a hut roughly two and a half by three meters. When demand outgrew the workshop's capacity, Lavezzo moved part of production to BriarWorks in Tennessee, and eventually handed the brand over to that firm entirely. The Moonshine name still continues today as a product line in the BriarWorks catalog. In writing on Virginia pipe making, Lavezzo is counted among the names who influenced the state's newer generation of makers.

Prohibition Co.

The workshop the maker now runs under his own name carries the name Prohibition Co. Both the brand name and the series known as Speakeasy allude to the period of alcohol prohibition in the United States between 1920 and 1933 and the hidden bars of those years; the maker has not separately explained the reasoning behind the name.

Briar is the essential material in production. Featured work includes sandblast-finished apple and dublin bodies and the rhodesian shape; for these names see classic pipe shapes, and for the distinction between smooth and sandblasted surfaces see surface finishes. The workshop sits closer to the artisan pipe world made up of single-person benches than to high-volume American manufacturers.

The Lathe's Other Domain

Alongside pipes, Lavezzo also runs Moonshine Rod Company, a fishing rod business he founded with his brother Nick Lavezzo. That brand's rods use reel seats turned from burl and hand-shaped cork grips. Prohibition Co.'s work is, by the maker's own account, a second line pursued in the time left over from the fishing rod business; the workshop's small scale is also linked to this.

Much of the information about the brand rests on the maker's own account; details such as the founding year are not clearly documented in independent records. The workshop's current level of activity likewise has not been confirmed by an up-to-date, independent source.