Chheda Pipes

Chheda Pipes is the handmade pipe brand produced at Premal Chheda's bench in Columbus, Ohio, in the United States. The brand did not emerge from a standalone factory but from the back workshop of a tobacco shop: the Chheda family's Smokers' Haven. For this reason the Chheda name is known in the American pipe community both as a maker and alongside a well-established retail tradition.

From Shop to Workshop

According to the business's own records, Smokers' Haven's founding goes back to June 1940: the shop opened in downtown Columbus by Joseph Zieve, his wife Ina Zieve, and his brother-in-law Sid Ritter stayed in the same family's hands for more than forty years. Connections Zieve built in England during the Second World War brought Barling, Charatan, Dunhill, and GBD pipes, along with blends made specially for the shop, onto its shelves. The business was sold in 1983, then passed in 1987 into the hands of Arvind and Pushpa Chheda. Their son Premal Chheda took over in 1999; running the shop across from the Ohio State University campus, he turned the balance — which had shifted toward cigars in the 1990s — back toward pipes. The decisive step came in 2006: at the larger address the shop moved to, a workshop was set up equipped not just for repairs but for making pipes as well.