Sykes Wilford

While Smio Satou trained in the classical Danish hand made pipe tradition, he has very much charted his own path as a pipe maker over the past couple of decades. He went, with Fukuda, who still makes Tsuge Ikebana pipes, to Denmark on two occasions in the 1970s and worked at Tsuge in the 1970s and 1980s, but in the ... Read More

The day after last year's event, Jeff, Adam, and I sat at Jeff's kitchen table and decided it was something that needed to happen again. Furthermore we wanted it to again be free for the attendees. We wanted it to be more like a prestigious academic conference to which one is invited, rather than a training workshop for which one pays. ... Read More

I smoke a lot of different tobaccos. It sort of comes with the territory. Lots of things I smoke before they're on the market, or even while they're still in the development stage. I also get to smoke lots of things that never make it to market. Of course, this would be obviously true for things C&D makes, but it's also true for blends from a host of other tobacco manufacturers. ... Read More

It has become something of a tradition that I write the newsletter introduction for the update that falls closest to January 1st. In the past couple of years, I've written about the emergence of a new enthusiasm for pipes, especially among men in their twenties and thirties. In looking over those, they feel dated now. Not because they were wrong, but because they were so very right. ... Read More

Perhaps five or six years ago, when Nanna Ivarsson first told me that she had piles and piles of Sixten Ivarsson's old drawings and correspondence, my heart skipped a beat. While my career has been entirely in the pipe and tobacco business, I'm educated as an historian and I'm the child of a professor and a university librarian. The very idea of such a trove a pipe history sitting in an attic somewhere set me aquiver. ... Read More

Like most friends who have known each other a long time, Tom Eltang and I have a series of discussions that are regularly reintroduced into our discourse. Some of these are ridiculous, like our plan to share a Gulfstream jet so that we can smoke while flying over the Atlantic (suffice it to say, it ain't happening). Some of these are serious subjects, things you'd expect, like discussion of the future of artisan pipes or changes in the wider pipe market. ... Read More

A few months ago, back in maybe June or July, Tom Eltang called to chat. We talk pretty regularly, so this wasn't particularly unusual. After a few minutes of chit-chat, the conversation took an interesting turn. Tom dropped something of a bomb. He was done with the Golden Contrast stain after decades of using it as his primary—often his only—pipe stain. He'd developed an allergy to one of the components. ... Read More

Jared Coles and Adam Davidson discuss the best way to clean the knuckles of bamboo, while Steve Liskey talks about different ways to drill and fit bamboo with Nathan Armentrout. Meanwhile Jeff Gracik, who is hosting this get-together at his home and workshop in San Diego ... Read More

It’s hard to believe that 2013 is almost behind us. We find ourselves at the end of a remarkable year for the pipe and pipe tobacco community, and for Smokingpipes.com especially. For a pastime, passion, and industry that has only just begun to emerge from a half-century of slow, steady decline in popularity, we pipe people have been unaccustomed to good news. ... Read More

As a woman in her late 20s, Asami Kikuchi is something of a rarity in pipe making. Indeed, she's even more of a rarity in Japanese pipe making. There are just a handful of female high-grade pipe makers in the world and all of them ... Read More