LatakiaLover wrote: ↑Thu May 20, 2021 3:00 pm
Since P&T magazine is no more I doubt I'll get in too much trouble for sharing this.
It's a story about Scottie P. that Chuck asked me to write in the summer of 2016. It ended up running as the feature as seen here, without changes. Just some added photos.
I thought I'd send it because of your second paragraph, BLB.
Without further ado, then:
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When watching Scottie Piersel work on a pipe the first thing you notice is the intensity of her gaze. Somewhere between a Japanese shokunin perfection-chaser and a bird of prey, she never stops looking, searching for things that aren't quite right, checking against a backlight, glide-touching with a fingertip, then cutting or sanding a little. Then doing it all again.
"You certainly concentrate, don't you?" I say. She returns to the moment at the sound of my voice, looks at me with a huge smile, and laughs. "Maybe. I guess so. I lose track of time, that's for sure."
"Since this is an interview I must ask if it has always been like that? This relaxed intensity of yours?" She thinks only long enough to form the first word. "Yes. I literally grew up in an artisan environment---a family-owned auto body shop that did metal finishing, not just replaced panels---and my grandfather didn't fool around. He brought every sense he could into his work. Used his hands, eyes, and ears, and said he only had to watch someone for a minute to know how their project would turn out. It stuck with me."
Suddenly there's silence. I look up. "Will that be in there?" she asks. "What I said just now about my grampa?" I assured her it would. She smiles.
"So, when did pipes come into your life?" I ask. "A young woman's life, at that. Pipes are not exactly common these days."
"It was straightforward, actually," she says. "My husband loves good cigars and one day just decided to give pipe smoking a try. He bought a couple along with some tobacco and seemed to like it, so when Father's Day came around I went online to buy him another as a gift. When I came across a do-it-yourself kit---you know those pre-drilled blocks?---I thought my actually making him one might make it more special."
"Nice. How did it go?" The sunshine smile again. "Well, it wasn't very pretty, but you could smoke it. He did smoke it. And making it was fun, so I bought another kit and it turned out better. Then another. Then I got a lathe, started using un-drilled wood, met other carvers online, started sharing tips and tricks... and, well... here we are."
There we were, indeed.
Only a few weeks before this conversation, Scottie had entered the Kansas City Pipe Club's annual North American Pipe Carving Contest, and handily placed in the winning 7-day set. Not easy to do, especially since it was one of the contest's ruthlessly strict "classic years" where fractions of a millimeter and attention to the smallest detail can make the difference between being selected for the set or not. That she had done it with an Author, a massive, chunky, flowing shape that was the polar opposite of the smallish, double-take-inducingly-slender geometric design that was her specialty, only added to the intrigue.
"Tell me about giving the recent Kansas City carving contest a go. Are you a competitive person by nature, or did you just feel it was something that might be educational or otherwise interesting?"
Again no hesitation. "I'm extremely competitive. My mom says I was born that way. Doesn't matter what it is, I try to be the best. Else why bother?" Then she softens. "Sorry. I didn't mean to imply I like glory or attention. I compete for myself. There's no other way to know how good or bad you really are at something, right? Your family and friends will always blow sunshine at you, and so will your own ego if you let it... So going head-to-head with other people is the only way to really know."
"I agree," I said. "Did the pressure of facing that truth affect how you made your entry? Such as easing into it in an experimental way that involved lots of practice attempts, maybe, or the opposite of that---deliberately waiting until the last minute because working without a safety net brings out something special in you?"
"Oh, gosh. Nothing like that. One day maybe I'll have that much confidence, but certainly not now. I definitely took the first path. In fact, the KC contest people announce the upcoming shape almost a year in advance, so I took full advantage of the time to study the Author shape family and make a few. The one I entered was my fourth or fifth, I think."
"Did you do anything differently once you knew you were holding your 'entry specimen'? When you realized that the perfect concave curve you had been chasing---or whatever it was---and a sufficiently flawless block of briar had finally converged?"
That smile again. "Nothing different in terms of tools, techniques, or finishes, but I did do something that Bo Nordh was famous for, which was to slow things down at that point and do the final shaping in tiny steps. That every time I thought it was done, no matter how certain I was, I forced myself to put the pipe on a shelf out of sight for the rest of the day. Then, the next morning I'd pick it up again and examine everything with a fresh eye. It was amazing. Bo was right. Easily one of the most important things I've learned about pipe making so far: when you're tired and want to be finished with a particular one, your brain lies to you. It edits and distorts things so you'll be satisfied. When perfection is your goal, though, you have to ignore that editing and distortion until everything truly is spot-on."
"How do you know when you really are finished, though? When 'truly spot-on' is reached?" I asked.
"When there are no tape dots for three days." She said.
"Please explain."
"That's how I mark the high spots. Tiny tabs of green masking tape. When I saw a high area, I'd sticker it. After all the high areas were marked I'd level them with sandpaper or a file until they were about ninety percent gone. Then put the pipe away. The next day I'd do it all again, and the next, until no high spots remained. For the contest pipe I made extra sure by not moving on to finishing until there were no tape dots for three fresh-eyed days in a row."
"Judging by the contest results, I'd say you got 'em all." I said. She smiled.
"Come to think of it, strictly speaking, 'removing all the high spots' applies to the entire process of shaping a pipe starting with the entire briar burl coming out of the ground, doesn't it? Since carving is material removal by definition---unlike creating an object with clay where material can be added---you must train yourself to see shaping things in a subtractive way. Recognize how to smooth and balance the flow of curves and shapes and still have everything line up, by only by taking away from them."
"Exactly," she said. "The tool sequence is bandsaw, lathe, high speed spinning disks, files, sandpaper, and buffer. Plus a few drills along the way, and maybe a chisel or two depending on the shape."
"What sort of dimensional changes are we talking about during that final 'Bo Nordh' fine-tuning process you described?"
"Gosh. I'm not even sure how that could be measured. No more than a few thousandths of an inch, I imagine. But seeing things that small isn't hard with practice. Just dim your shop lights and shine a lamp on a section of smooth, white wall. Holding a dark pipe in front of a bright background like that lets you see its profile like nothing else. Then, when the profile finally looks right from every angle, hold the pipe under a bright light and move it around to catch any low-angle shadows on the wood that shouldn't be there, and to create reflections on the stem. Those shadows and reflections expose everything."
"As long as we're talking about the Kansas City contest, how did being one of the winners rate on your Pipemaking Memories list?" I ask. "For that matter, what is your best pipe-related memory of any kind?"
Only a second's pause. "There are two, and it's a tie. Getting in the seven day set is one of them. One of those 'made it to the top of the mountain' kind of memories. Achieving a goal. The other is the long weekend I spent at the Chicago show a few months ago. It was my first time and it was like Disneyland. The people I met, the things I saw, the things I learned, the special moments I shared. It was all good. One hundred percent good."
I couldn't help but smile and laugh a bit myself. "Yeah, that's pretty much how it is for everybody. The Force is strong there, isn't it?."
We were both quiet for a second when we realized my joke actually had the feel of truth.
I shook it off and continued. "You did well there commercially, too, I understand. Had a table and sold a lot of pipes?"
"Yes," she said. "I arranged to share a table with a friend and did pretty well for a first-timer. I had no idea what to expect, so just took every pipe I had on hand that wasn't spoken for, and hoped for the best. When someone in the smoking tent bought a fourth of them on Thursday evening before the show even started I was pretty happy. It meant the trip would be a success for me money-wise, sure, but a much bigger reason was because of how experienced and sophisticated the buyers are at Chicago. Making pipes that those guys liked enough to actually buy as a batch felt like hitting a double off a Major League pitcher my first time at bat."
I must have looked surprised, because she said, "Yes, I'm a completely and absolutely hopeless big time sports fan, so don't even go there."
"Yes ma'am!" I said.
She laughed.
Uniquely shaped individual pipes are not only common in the hobby, but creating them is the primary reason many artisan carvers make pipes at all. Much less common are unique designs that support a variety of shapes, such as the so-called reverse calabash, or metal pipes with detachable briar bowls.
As unlikely as it sounds, Scottie literally invented such a design---an entire class of pipes---only two years after she started to carve. It's not just a "cute for the sake of it" sort of design, either, but one that expands the visual definition of what a durable and practical pipe can be.
So far, she's the only person in the world who makes them.
The name of the design? The "Scottie". The reason for the name? It's not what you probably think.
"So, tell me about the 'Scottie' design," I say. "How did it come about? What inspired it? All that. Enquiring minds want to know."
"I wish there was an entertaining story to go with it, but there really isn't. I just liked the lines of some of the antique clay tavern pipes I saw in books, and was determined to make one out of briar. The shanks kept exploding on the lathe, though---cut too thin and the wood will flex---and the handful that stayed together weren't strong enough to hold a push-fit stem without a band. Then, the pressure required to fit a functionally wide band caused a lot of breakage. It was a mess."
"So what did you do?"
"Basically, I decided to more-or-less turn everything inside out. Literally carve the pipe around a thin-walled but super-strong length of stainless steel tubing, and have the stem fit over it instead of into it. It took a lot of trial-and-error to find the right materials, ratios, dimensions, and so forth---I even had to make a few tools so that some of the fabrication steps would be easily repeatable---but once I did, that was it."
"Watch this," she said, and took a 'Scottie' pipe off her bench, walked over to a carpeted area, and tossed it spinning vertically into the air. It hit the ground and just bounced. "For all their slenderness---that one is six inches long and weighs sixteen grams---they're probably tougher than most standard pipes."
"Wow. Seeing is believing," I said. "That's impressive. How do they smoke, though? I'd guess a lot of people would assume a stainless steel airway would cause condensation and smoke wet."
"I can't explain why, but that's simply not the case," she said. Maybe it's because the airway is perfectly straight, is mirror smooth, and has a constant diameter so there's nothing to cause turbulence in the smoke stream? Again, I can't explain it. But I do know that no one has ever told me that their pipe didn't smoke well. Also, people keep buying them. Meaning they get one, try it, and get more. That wouldn't happen if they didn't smoke well."
"Come to think of it," I say, "many Dunhill models came equipped with a removable metal tube in the shank---some still do, in fact---for almost a century, and wetness was never a problem with them. That's millions of pipes." I laugh. "Never mind. I hereby withdraw the question. I do have one more before we move on, though. The name. You're hardly what anyone would call narcissistic or a shameless self-promoter, so why did you choose the name "Scottie" for the design?
That got the biggest laugh so far. "It's sort of an inside joke," she said. "The first successful clay-style pipe I made after all those experiments happened to have a bulldog bowl. It was just chance. But I couldn't call it a bulldog because bulldogs are chunky. The opposite of slender and delicate-looking. But a Scottie dog---which is a real breed, by the way---is small and neat. Not like a Whippet or Italian Greyhound, maybe, but when it's also your name, close counts. So 'Scottie' it was. After that, even though my clay-style pipes came to have a variety of bowl shapes, the name stuck."
After examining a selection of Scottie's pipes, I realized that she didn't seem to care about grain orientation or making straight grain showpieces. Since those things almost go without saying for artisan carvers these days, I had to know more.
"What's your story regarding grain?" I ask. "I don't see any evidence that you 'chase' straight grain."
"I wish I could give you an entertaining reason for that, too, but I can't," she said, again with a smile. "I don't make a point of avoiding grain alignment when drilling or shaping, it's just that trying to create sculptural showpieces isn't my thing. I
appreciate amazing grain but I'm not
moved by it. Does that make sense? I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm not an 'artist mindset' type of pipe maker. I'm a craftsman."
"All pipe makers are arguably craftsmen, though, aren't they?" I say. "What do you mean, exactly?"
"I'm talking about where your head and heart live. For me, it's function, precision, and practical design. Those are what I'm naturally drawn to, so figure that concentrating on them will both result in my best work and make the creation process itself more satisfying."
"Got it. You know that paying little attention to grain---just letting the wood fall randomly and drilling before shaping---is how the great British and French makers dealt with their briar, right? Does that mean you feel some affinity for the old ways and the classic shapes?"
"Absolutely yes to both," she said. "I love the classics so much that I want to master them all. In fact, being able to produce a drop-dead gorgeous billiard, prince, apple, Dublin, and so forth by hand is my greatest pipe-related ambition."
The elephant in the room was starting to get fidgety by this time---I'd put it off as long as I could---so just jumped straight in.
"I mentioned it in passing earlier hoping you'd take the bait, but you didn't. So, now I must ask directly. The whole 'being one of the few female pipe makers in the world' thing. What's it like? Do you hate it, enjoy it, find it has advantages or disadvantages? All that. Or would you rather just skip the subject entirely? Your call."
"No problem," she said. "I understand that some people might be curious. The answer, though, is I never think about it at all. Not unless someone brings it up directly, anyway. I never thought it mattered when I started carving, and still don't. All it takes to make pipes is two hands, two eyes, and a brain, and women have those things the same as men."
"I'll bet Nanna Ivarsson is smiling," I said.
"Exactly. She is one of the best pipe makers alive. Her work sells for thousands of dollars and the demand for it is crazy among top tier collectors who don't cut slack for anyone---what you hold in your hand is all that matters. I think one brilliant woman carver is all it takes to prove we have what it takes."
"Hard to refute that," I said. "Would it be fair to say that you just want to make pipes and are happy to let other people worry about the whole male/female thing?"
"Yes," she said. "That sums it up nicely."
Not wanting to wear out my welcome, but still eager to know more about this fascinating woman, I decided to run through the remaining questions on my list in a rapid fire way.
P&T -- "OK, then. A few more questions and I'll let you get back to work and your family. They are in no special order and are all over the map. Ready? First question: what are your favorite materials to work with?"
SP -- "I'm a traditionalist, so briar and vulcanite for sure. I experimented with some bog oak, but didn't care for it. Not consistent enough. I will make a stem from acrylic if someone specifically asks for it, though."
P&T -- "If you could have one pipe making superpower, what would it be?"
SP -- "Hah! No doubt about that. X-ray vision. If I could see into those blocks I would never complain about anything ever again!"
P&T -- "Do you take commissions?"
SP -- "Some. The design has to be in my wheelhouse, and it can't be so unusual that no one else would want it if the transaction isn't completed for some reason, though."
P&T -- "If you had a large amount of money that could only be spent on pipe making, what would you buy with it?"
SP -- "Materials without a doubt. Briar especially. Then rod stock and a few tools."
P&T -- "What makes you laugh?"
SP -- "Hm. I'm pretty easily amused. I'd have to say what makes me laugh the most is me. The dumb stuff I do."
P&T -- "Like agree to this interview?"
SP -- "No comment." (laughs)
P&T -- "What's the most unusual pipe you've made to date?"
SP -- "That would be a tie between a gourd calabash I grew myself, and a half-pound monster pipe inspired by a briar block the size of a loaf of bread. Both were a bit nuts. But fun.
P&T -- "What is the hardest thing about being a pipe maker? Interpret that however you like."
SP -- "Dealing with a sudden failure that 'kills' a pipe during its creation. Nature's flaw, operator error, simple accident, it doesn't matter. Happy near-perfection one minute, firewood the next. Such failures are inevitable and go with the territory, but that doesn't make them any easier. For me, anyway. I get emotionally invested in every project."
P&T -- "What is the biggest misconception people have about you?"
SP -- "That I'm brash. Oh, wait, that's true (laughs). Let me think... that I'm cold in that Scandinavian way, I guess. I'm actually a goof. I just get so focused on things that I'm unaware of the people around me sometimes, and it comes off as distant.
P&T -- "Last question. And feel free to give a long answer if you want. You've now been making pipes for a little over four years. In that time you've made a significant mark, not the least of which is designing and perfecting an entire line of unique pipes. That's pretty amazing given the competitiveness of the artisan market. So, what---and this is the question---would you most like to accomplish in the next four years?"
SP -- "No long answer needed. That's easy. The same thing every serious pipe maker wants most. To have a hundred pipes spread on a banquet table somewhere, a dozen collectors brought in, and in less than a minute they know which are yours without even picking them up. Can I get there in four years? Probably not. But I'm sure gonna try."
