Waughtel (Robert Waughtel)

Waughtel is the name given to the pipes of Robert Waughtel, who worked in Harrisburg, in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Waughtel was known first as a tobacconist and, in the last years of his life, as a pipe maker; the number of pipes he produced is small, and today these pieces circulate only among collectors. Nearly everything known about the brand comes down through his family and those who knew him; the information below has not been cross-checked against independent archival records.

A Craft From a Tobacconist Family

By family accounts, the Waughtels had been in the tobacco trade for several generations. Robert's father, Preston Waughtel, ran cigar shops in York County, Pennsylvania; it was in this environment that Robert learned to hand-roll cigars, and his interest in tobacco lasted a lifetime. In later years he ran pipe shops in Lebanon, Lancaster, and Harrisburg. His own blends stood out at these shops, including ones named "Waughtel's Best" and "Waughtel's Delight." According to a 2009 account from his daughter, some of these blends went on living at the Wingenroth Pipe Shop in Lebanon even after the business changed hands twice more following his own departure.

The Move Into Pipe Making

Waughtel had long collected fine pipes, but his own wish to make them found an outlet only in the late 1980s; by family account, he had spent the two years after leaving the shop playing poker professionally. He's said to have bought both workshop equipment and a large quantity of aged briar from a pipe maker who was retiring from the trade, which he then stored in a temperature- and humidity-controlled room. As covered under curing, resting a cut log for a long time is a stage that reduces the wood's later movement; the ready-made stock on hand let Waughtel work with well-matured material even from his very first pipes. As he advanced in the making process, his sense of shape sharpened too.

Design Language and the End

In the accounts of those who knew him, pipes coming from Waughtel's hand are distinguished first by their voluminous stummels: the form leans on classic pipe shapes, but the proportions push past catalog measurements. Two pieces described by one collector can be dated: a semi-scoop marked 1991 with a slightly curved (quarter-bent) shank, and a brandy that came into his hands in 1996, with even less curve (an eighth-bent). By his daughter's estimate, total production stayed under two hundred pipes; the toll of the long labor each piece demanded is cited as one reason for the small number. Because the count is so small, his pipes turn up only through the estate pipe market.

Robert Waughtel died in 1997; two different accounts give different months. A friend who knew him places the death in the early months of the year, while his daughter points to July and a sudden heart attack. By the same account, Waughtel was in the process of passing his equipment and accumulated knowledge to an apprentice in the Harrisburg area at the time; whether that transfer was completed is unknown. No new pipes bearing his name followed; what remains is a limited number of signed pieces and the blend names left over from his tobacconist years.