Fischer (the House of Fischer)

Fischer, in full The House of Fischer, was an American pipe workshop that operated first in Buffalo, New York, and later in the neighboring town of Orchard Park. The Fischer family that ran the workshop is said to have learned the craft in Germany and to have carried it on for generations; production in America came to an end in the late 1970s.

The brand belongs to the class of small-scale operations turning out work at a bench behind the shop, rather than the large American factories running mass production.

The Workshop's Course

The most concrete document on the workshop's operation is a 1956 promotional text, which states that the briar pipes were, without exception, bench-made. The family also worked with meerschaum pipes; this second line of work is the main source of the case of mistaken identity discussed below.

The claim that the shop opened in Buffalo in the 1890s rests solely on family tradition and is not documented. The Buffalo workshop closed in the late 1950s, and Arthur Fischer, who took over the business, moved production to his home in Orchard Park. Arthur Fischer, the last known member of the family in the trade, retired in 1978, and the shop closed the same year. Accounts of the Orchard Park period suggest that in this final stage the emphasis shifted from making new pipes toward repair and sales; the claim that some pipes from these years may have been made for the shop by an outside manufacturer has not been confirmed.