Saul Salzhauer

Saul Salzhauer was one of the few makers still carving pipes by hand at a bench in New Jersey in the mid-twentieth century. Nearly everything known about him rests on a single source, a February 1973 newspaper article on the handmade pipe makers remaining in the state; since the article's text is not directly accessible today, the information here is given via Pipedia's quoted excerpt. The two other names mentioned in the same article are Jack H. Weinberger, known by the stamp JHW Pipes, and William Craig, founder of the Craig brand.

Learning the Craft

Salzhauer said he had learned the craft alongside his father, who did the same work, during the years of the Great Depression. Records give his birth year as 1919 or 1920; this is inferred from the statement that he was fifty-three in 1973. He began regular production under his own name in 1951 and made his living from it for more than twenty years. He thus entered a small minority who continued to work by hand at a time when American pipe production had already largely moved to factories.

The Bench in Newark

Salzhauer commuted from his home in Brooklyn to Newark, working at the workshop attached to the Jelling tobacco shop. This shop, opened in 1919 and closed in the mid-1970s, was a store brand that stamped its name on bowls it did not manufacture itself. There is no direct record linking Salzhauer to the phrase "hand-finished on premises" that appeared in the shop's advertisements; though the two being connected seems plausible, this remains an inference.

He worked mainly with Algerian- and Greek-origin briar blocks, occasionally with other woods as well. The shapes he produced were freehand bodies determined by the block's own grain rather than fixed molds. This preference coincides with the same years as the era's Danish-derived freehand fashion.

A Vanishing Craft

Salzhauer believed his trade had reached its end. He attributed the decline himself to the division of labor: as production was broken into pieces to cut prices, the worker specialized in a single stage replaced the master who finished a bowl alone from start to end. In 1973 he stated that only two other people in the state still worked by hand as he did, and that all three were past fifty.

No record has been found of what happened to Salzhauer's bench after the Jelling shop closed. His name is remembered today as one of the few documented witnesses to the period in which the American handmade pipe tradition receded in the face of factory production.