Some carver's find themselves in the enviable position of being able to leap right into the pipe making realm and never look back. Other carver's are dealt hands that require a more circuitous route. Brad Pohlmann is in the latter category.

Brad Pohlmann's love affair with pipes and pipe making goes back well over thirty years, with a "pipe pilgrimage" to the great old smoke shops of London, as well as a trip north to Perth in Scotland, to visit the venerable firm of Rattray's. The young man's interest was further heightened with a chance encounter of Danish Carver Finn Meyan Anderson, at a smoke shop in NYC. Brad found himself fascinated with the shapes, and the more that Andersen talked, the more Brad became enamored with the pipe making process.. Returning to San Diego, Pohlmann began pouring over any written materials he could find on pipe making. Pre-internet, sources were limited. Brad would scour "The Pipe Smoker's Ephemeris" and made notes of the locations of all pipe makers between the west coast and New York. Armed with this information and a new found enthusiasm, Brad threw on a back pack, extended his thumb, and set out to find as many pipe makers as possible. Hooking up with Finn Anderson was to be the last leg of the journey.

Upon hitting NYC, Brad heard that Finn was making pipes in Stowe, VT, and continued his journey northward. By the time that Brad arrived, Finn had moved again. In the Dane's stead, Brad met the estimable talents of Elliott and Jorg at the Briar Workshop. Brad did some, in his words "confabulation", and was hired. With the later addition of the legendary Jim Cooke, the Briar Workshop was the crucible that forged Brad's initial skills. For the next four years, both in Stow, and later Coral Gables, Pohlmann learned the nuts and bolts of drilling, shaping and engineering.

In 1980, Brad returned to his native California and finished a four year tool and die apprenticeship. The skills he learned during this time were to be a cap to his journeyman pipe travels, with an eye to launching the product he envisioned. Then life happened. Brad was offered a job, too good to pass up, in the booming computer industry, and pipes became more of a hobby for the next sixteen years. In 2003, Brad started focusing on pipes in earnest, employing the skill set he learned at The Briar Workshop, now augmented with his 800 hours of tool and die study in the 80's.

Using high quality briar, and pipe tools of his own design, Brad's initial pipes are stellar from a drilling and engineering point of view. "Close enough" or "That will do" aren't phrases of a machinist who is used to dealing within tolerances of microns. In September 2005, Brad got together with Todd Johnson, and contact with the American master moved Brad's shaping to a decidedly higher plane. Brad speaks of many pipe makers with admiration. Todd Johnson, Jodi Davis, Tom Eltang, Paolo Becker, and Japanese pipe makers Kei'ichi Gotoh and Hiroyuki Tokutomi, to name a few. Looking at the Brad Pohlmann pipes, while one can see inspirational elements from all of the above, Johnson and Davis seem to exert the greatest influence. Quite fitting, for a man in the upper echelon of US pipe makers.