Steve Morrisette Pipes

Steve Morrisette Pipes is the brand of handmade briar pipes American maker Steve Morrisette produces at the workshop he runs by himself. Morrisette comes from neither a factory nor a formal apprenticeship: he entered the craft first as a collector, then took his place at the bench by visiting the American masters of his generation one by one. Production is small-scale and comes entirely from one hand. In this respect he is counted among the generation of American workshop pipe making that gained strength in the 2000s, the generation that trained not master-to-apprentice but master-to-master.

Style, Material, and Stamp

Morrisette's design language stays close to the Danish school; he either applies classic Danish molds directly or interprets them freely. This school is known for its fluid lines that go beyond mold dimensions and its thin-walled, lightweight bodies. His pipes are mostly small in scale and light; they rest on proportional relationships and surface transitions rather than large volumes. How much work has gone into a body that looks simple in its details can only be told on close inspection. For the mouthpiece (stem) he favors German vulcanite, uses horn and wood as spacer pieces, and finishes the briar with staining schemes that bring out the grain. According to retailer profiles, the pipes carry the stamp "S M" within a circle.

From Collecting to the Workshop

Morrisette's standard was set through the Danish and German premium-line pipes he collected over a long period; Jess Chonowitsch, Tom Eltang, Teddy Knudsen, Rainer Barbi, and Paolo Becker are counted among the names that set this standard. His own production began with modest experiments: he reshaped inexpensive pipes he already owned and cut bodies from ready-drilled blocks. What turned these experiments into a real occupation was pipe shows. Chicago's large pipe show and the CORPS gathering in Richmond both allowed him to reach masters and opened his own work to criticism. According to the account given, his move to regular production dates to the early 2000s; in later years pipe making turned into his full-time occupation.

What He Learned from the Masters

His training is not a program but the sum of short, intensive periods spent at other workshops. He closed the gaps in his lathe work with Brad Pohlmann, who came from Oregon and worked with him at his workshop in Virginia. He owes his habits around tool selection and getting the most out of the bench to the days he spent alongside Todd Johnson in South Carolina. As for the chance to watch how a premium-line pipe is built from start to finish, he found it at the workshop, then in New Jersey, of Jeff Gracik, founder of the J. Alan Pipes brand.

Current Status

Morrisette works today in Nashville, Tennessee; the year he moved here from his workshop in Virginia has not been recorded. He is counted among the familiar names at American pipe shows; the brand's name is among those mentioned when discussing contemporary American pipes produced at one-man workshops.