Piercing, inquisitive eyes. Self-assured movements. Confident body language. Scottie Piersel radiates the poise of one thoughtlessly comfortable with her skills, and down-to-earth with her self-image. Her spontaneous laugh and instantly friendly manner easily endorse that she is as without pretension as a puppy, though she has garnered enough admiration and accolades in the pipe world to enlarge anyone's ego.

"I'm just me," she says. "A wife, mother and pipemaker." She has a magnetism, though, that makes her feel like family. She's everyone's favorite sister. For some, an older sister with intelligent, logical and caring advice; for others, a younger sister with an amusing abundance of enthusiasm and energy; and for even others, she's that sister who's really fun to just hang out with.

She found pipemaking irresistible, despite her time being monopolized by the scheduling of her husband's landscaping business and taking care of three children and a household. Her husband is a cigar smoker who, around 2012, decided to try pipe smoking, like his father. She decided to buy a pipe for him for Father's Day and looked online, where she discovered briar pipe kits, and recognized that a pipe she herself made would be a more personal gift, so she bought a kit and made a pipe. Her husband later decided pipesmoking wasn't for him, and that pipe now sits in a place of honor on their mantle, but Scottie had become more than enthusiastic. She loved pipemaking and found she missed practicing a craft. "I grew up in an auto body shop," she says. "It was a real body shop, with sheet metal work, making hotrods, the whole deal. I love working on cars, but in essence, I was born to work with my hands."

By the third or fourth pipe, she started hand-cutting her own stems rather than buying preformed blanks. She found pipemakersforum.com and read everything, applying what she learned, and started posting her work online for review and comment. She happened to be seven or eight months pregnant when she found the Greater Kansas City pipe club. The members weren't accustomed to enormously pregnant women joining the club, so she made an impression, and was soon completely immersed in the pipe hobby.

Scottie wondered why some brands were so popular, and how her pipes could become popular. George Dibos of the KC club told her that a pipemaker needs to offer something no one else does. A Jess Chonowitsch pipe, or a J.T. Cooke or Geiger or Ivarsson pipe, is easily recognizable as something far different from the usual. The makers of these pipes have developed particular skills and styles that make their pipes significantly different and easily recognizable from a distance. She had to do the same. She had to offer something unavailable elsewhere.

No one talks with Scottie for long before recognizing that her mind is extraordinary. She thought about the problem, and in a few weeks knew she wanted to produce a design that blended styles of long, willowy, tavern-style clay pipes with modern pipemaking, with an additional nod to the Kiseru, a long, thin, small-bowled, culturally traditional Japanese pipe. Scottie wanted to make pipes long and lithe and just as recognizable.

She started turning pipes on her lathe, pipes with long pencil shanks. However, they kept blowing apart. The briar couldn't take the stress of wood turning at that diameter. Dibos told her about a pipe repair method he used utilizing stainless steel tubing to repair and support broken shanks.

"I couldn't offer advice for her specific use, though," says George. "She figured that out on her own. But once that stainless steel sleeve is in there, it's tough as nails. Scottie asked about condensation, but I've used this repair method hundreds of times without a problem, and for that matter Dunhill sold millions of pipes with metal tubes in them for over half a century." Some artisan carvers, such as Jess Chonowitsch, use stainless steel tubing as reinforcement for their bamboo shanks, and without complaints of condensation.

George gave her the contact information for a supplier, but that was about as far as he could help her. "I told her that I'm just a repair guy; here's the concept, but you'll have to figure out how to make it work. And she did. That was not simple, and the reason that no one is out there copying her, I know this for a fact because I've talked with enough makers, is they've tried and found that the destruction rate and frustration rate is not worth chasing. They say, 'We know how she does it, but unless you get certain angles and depths and thicknesses exactly right, it won't work, and it ain't worth the trouble.'"

I grew up in an auto body shop. It was a real body shop, with sheet metal work, making hotrods, the whole deal. I love working on cars, but in essence, I was born to work with my hands.

Scottie had the original design she wanted, and taught herself, through trial, error and enormous quantities of time and research, the techniques necessary for making it.

"I tossed the first 10 in the trash trying to figure out how to turn the shank on my wood lathe. And I threw the next 10 in the trash figuring out just how thin I could make the shank so that the mortise in the stem would hold up and actually survive not only being made, but daily use and being handled. Pipe 21 worked."

After two or three months of making pencil shanks, she started thinking about naming the line and ordering a special stamp for it. She asked at the pipe club what everyone thought. "I took a little bulldog bowl on my pencil shank to the club meeting and I showed it to George and said, 'What do you think of this bulldog? I think the bowl works really well on this shank.' He said, 'That's not a bulldog. That's a Scottie dog.' Everyone at the table loved it, but I thought it would be pretentious."

George explained that she was missing the joke. "She didn't want to be arrogant by naming the design after herself," he says. "But I said, no, a bulldog is a squat muscular animal and a squat muscular pipe shape. A Scottie is also a breed of dog, fast on its feet, small, trim, sporty. It's a play on words and only a coincidence that her name is Scottie. I would have made the same recommendation even if her name was Josephine. Pipe people will get the gag." Scottie had a stamp made and the Scottie pipe was born.

The Scottie continues to gain popularity worldwide, and is particularly sought after in Asia, perhaps because of cultural links to similar pipes, though no cultural link is necessary; the pipes are exceptionally cool and sell themselves. But what is it about the Scottie that resonates so prominently with pipesmokers?

Scotties possess long, slender elegance, with shanks smaller in diameter than a pencil. The mouthpieces seem wide, but are of average size and appear larger in direct contrast to the unbelievably narrow shanks, most of which are only three-tenths of an inch in diameter. Scottie doesn't chase grain, but form and shape, so, unlike Claudio Cavicchi, for example, who has built a reputation for maximizing extraordinary grain, the attraction is to the form itself. Scottie pipes are reminiscent, as designed to be, of the classic clay pipes and Kiserus of yore, breaking through boundaries of Western pipemaking, ironically, in both length and compactness. Many pipesmokers love the loose historical aspect, but really, those shanks are extraordinary and unanticipated, and the pipes are fun to smoke; not only are Scotties exceptional performers, but at first they appear to be optical illusions. They just don't seem achievable.

While the pipes appear fragile, they are astonishingly tough. The shanks don't break, even when the pipe is deliberately tossed spinning onto a carpeted floor (a demonstration that Scottie has performed, though it isn't recommended treatment for any pipe). "From the beginning, it's been important that I give people something that's going to last," says Scottie. "I make functional pipes that are to be smoked and enjoyed and handled and put in your pipe roll and taken somewhere. My finish is something that's durable, something that's going to last and actually improve with age as you smoke the pipe and rub it with a cloth to clean it. And while beauty is important, function always has to come first. I'm a craftsman, not an artist, and I think that's the difference between a craftsman and an artist. For an artist, beauty comes first; functionality is not an afterthought, but its does not get top billing. Craftsmen want their work to work."

A KC club member, Bill Miller, owns one of Scottie's pipes and had an incident with it. "It was one of the earlier ones I made," says Scottie, "a little six-inch Scottie Billiard, but at the Chicago show two or three years ago, he dropped it. He thought he put it in his pipe bag as he was walking out to his car, and he dropped it, it hit the ground, he kicked it and then stepped on it. All before realizing what was happening. He ran back in and showed it to me, and other than a scratch on the sandblast finish, there was nothing wrong with the pipe. It survived when most regular pipes wouldn't have fared so well. Bill said, 'I can't believe it; I dropped it, kicked it, and stepped on it, and it's fine.' So these pipes, you do have to throw them down before they'll break. And if something does break, 99 percent of the time it will be the stem. And the stem is the easy thing to replace."

Scottie pipes utilize a reverse-tenon design, with the reinforcing stainless steel tubing extending from the shank and acting as the tenon. She has perfected her tolerances to the point where she can send a replacement stem to a customer without having to see the pipe.

She bought all of her tubing, a lifetime's worth, from the same lot number to insure against even a ten-thousandth of an inch variation, and a batch of identical drill bits in the same lot number, because George advised her that, although they may all be stamped the same, there are minute variations in lots. With her precise engineering and methods, she can make a dozen hand-cut stems a day. And because she knows the measurements exactly, she can send a replacement stem without having to fit it to the pipe in her own shop. Frankly, that's almost unheard of in the artisan pipe world.

While beauty is important, function always has to come first. I'm a craftsman, not an artist, and I think that's the difference between a craftsman and an artist. For an artist, beauty comes first; functionality is not an afterthought, but its does not get top billing. Craftsmen want their work to work.

Her success as a pipemaker is gratifying, but her real competition ("and I'm very competitive," she says) is herself. When she conceives and makes a new shape, for example, she knows that family and friends will unconsciously spin their opinions in her favor, as will her own mind. No, she goes elsewhere for unrelenting and honest assessment, to more experienced craftsmen, like George Dibos. She values and appreciates all the hours of time and advice that she's been given by so many over the years, but George was, and is, especially influential. "I consider him my mentor," says Scottie. "He taught me about hand-cutting stems, and so much more. And he has an eye for detail that is uncanny."

Dibos has been a judge in the Kansas City contest for years. Watching him assess a pipe is an experience and an education. He checks the overall shape in silhouette from every angle, noting any deficits and commendable features, especially for symmetry or creative asymmetry; he checks for precise curvature around the heel and shank and rim and everywhere else curves abound; he checks the lip button design and execution, especially for misalignment or minute file or sandpaper marks, and the lip button internal features, as well; he checks the mortise and tenon, seeing that they are properly drilled and oriented, and looking for the chamfering and polishing that is relatively standard in artisan-level carving. That's just a little of what he checks, and checks with deep concentration; and he does all that with a loupe. He checks not only the pipe's adherence to the standards of a traditional shape, when it's traditional, but has an encyclopedic knowledge of many shapes and brands. His work as a pipe repairman has honed his skills to fine precision.

It's little wonder that Scottie's pipes quickly benefitted from George's constructive criticism. And she's developed an intense eye for detail similar to George's. But an additional, essential resource for her was Rad Davis. "Rad gave me the best advice. He said, 'Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.'

"I had a little straight apple, maybe my 10th or 12th pipe, and posted it to pipemakersforum and asked for reviews. There were a couple of larger sandpits just at the end of the shank where it meets the stem, and my way of camouflaging them was to carve a little decorative band in the briar, around the shank. Rad said it was a good looking pipe, but I wasn't at a point where those flaws should have been any concern at all, and what I did to the pipe actually detracted from the overall composition. He said, 'Just because you can do something does not mean that you should. In this case, had you not done that, the flaws would have been of little consequence and the pipe would have been better for it.'"

She keeps that principle in mind always. "I can make very sculptural, Danish-style pieces, but I don't enjoy it. Every once in a while I'll run across a block and think it would make a wonderful piece that's really not in my repertoire, and in the back of my head is Rad saying, just because you can doesn't mean you should. It's not what I do. I like to know exactly what I'm doing before doing it. I hardly ever put a ring on a pipe. It's not that I can't, but usually when I try to get too artsy, I know I'm pushing it; in the back of my mind, I come back to that principle."

Winning a coveted place in the Greater Kansas City Pipe Show's North American carving competition's 7-day set was a turning point for Scottie, and even more impressive than it sounds, because the shape made was an Author, a particularly demanding classic, and it was not a shape in her repertoire. Scottie pipes are far from even resembling an Author, and this contest was an opportunity to demonstrate that she was not confined to her specialty. She took a year to study the shape and made failure after failure before finishing a pipe that she considered worthy.

And it was remarkable. Perfect undercurve, perfect proportions, not the hint of a high spot or a mark on the finish, meticulously precise bowl/shank transition, excellent stem curvature and build, exemplary engineering ... well, it easily won a place in the set. That was a reaffirming moment for her. "It demonstrated that I could render a traditional shape — and correct renditions of traditionals are not easy — and that I wasn't a pipemaker stuck in a particular niche." She was competing with herself again. And winning.

Part of Scottie's ability to carve such superlative shapes is her strategy for final sanding, a strategy that Bo Nordh was famous for. She slows her process at the end. She sands a stummel until she thinks it's perfect, then puts it aside for a day or more and looks again, marking any high spots or trouble areas with tape. She fixes those and puts it away and looks again. "That time away from the pipe is amazing," she says. "After an interval like that, you're able to see so much you can miss at first."

Now that she's a successful pipemaker, made so by the strength of her own will, Scottie continues making 150-200 pipes a year, improving wherever and however she can, and still raising three children and working with her husband's business. Still, she'll be attending more pipe shows in the future, including Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, Columbus, and Las Vegas, and has planned a trip to Tuscany for the pipe show in 2020. In development are plans for pushing boundaries of color combinations in stain and stems. Demand for her work is high, beyond her current ability to produce, and she cheerfully accepts all of her responsibilities and works seven days a week to keep up. But Scottie Piersel is a woman fortified by natural boundless energy and a sincere affection for the pipe community. "For me," she says, "it never feels like work."