Steinhart (Briar Originals)

Steinhart is a short-lived signature that emerged in New Jersey in the 1970s, in the years American handmade pipe making was just taking root. Behind it is Vic Steinhart, nephew of Jack H. Weinberger, owner of the JHW Pipes brand. Pipes bearing his own stamp can today be found only in collections; by contrast, the names that passed through the workshops Steinhart worked at and helped set up went on, in the following decades, to become among the country's well-known manufacturers.

Trained at Weinberger's Workshop

As JHW's order volume grew, young people from the surrounding neighborhood began to be taken on at the workshop; Steinhart, who lived next door, was one of them. It is said he made quick progress on freehand bodies, which demand skill and are shaped without relying on a ready template. Most of those working at the workshop's benches in those years were of high-school age; some of those who joined were friends who already knew each other. Mark Tinsky and Curt Rollar, who began working at the same place, would go on to found the workshop later known as American Smoking Pipe Co.

SK Pipes and Briar Originals

Steinhart's first independent venture was SK Pipes, which he founded with a friend after finishing high school. The workshop operated out of a rented house in the same neighborhood as JHW. According to the account, the partner was a schoolmate given as Mitch Kaufman; since this detail rests solely on the testimony of contemporaries, it leaves no trace in independent records. One of the employees who had run the polishing work at JHW also moved over to the new workshop; two benches in a small neighborhood sharing the same pool of labor is a typical example of the fluidity among independent workshops of the period. The venture, even so, was short-lived.

Steinhart then founded the Briar Originals brand under his own name; the pipes were stamped with the abbreviation BOI. It is reported that the brand appeared at the era's tobacconists' trade show, RTDA, but production did not last beyond a few years. According to records, the total number of pipes produced is between four hundred and five hundred. This figure, small even for an independent workshop working in briar, explains why the BOI stamp is so rarely seen today.

The Workshop Changes Hands

Marrying young, Steinhart moved into a job offering steady income and left pipe making, going to work at a lumber business. The last unfinished BOI bodies left on the bench were completed by Curt Rollar and Mark Tinsky; with the money raised from selling these pipes, Steinhart's remaining briar stock and equipment were acquired. The remaining material of a small brand that had closed thus became the starting capital for one of the East Coast's long-lived workshops.

Steinhart's story as a maker ends here; by contrast, the generation that trained at the same benches built a line lasting more than forty years. For this reason the Steinhart name is remembered not for the number of pipes it left behind but for being a connecting point in the founding years of American handmade pipe making. A BOI-stamped pipe today is regarded by collectors less as an example of a brand than as a document of a particular workshop circle.