Pipe Brands
Fuerst: Bill Fuerst's Hand-Carved American Pipes
A brief record of the handmade briar pipes produced under his own name, from the late 1970s to the late 1980s, by Bernard William "Bill" Fuerst, a skilled woodcarver who lived in Illinois and Arkansas.
Fuerst is the small pipe output known under the name of an American amateur maker. The maker behind the name is Bernard William "Bill" Fuerst, born September 1, 1923, in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. The brand is not a regular business or catalogue but simply a limited number of hand-carved bodies the maker produced at the bench in the second half of his life.
In this respect it belongs to the numerous generation of part-time makers who fill a large share of the history of pipemaking in the United States.
The Maker's Life
Fuerst was the son of William and Beulah (Koenig) Fuerst. During the Second World War he served in the Pacific theater in the U.S. Army's Signal Corps, holding the rank of first lieutenant. On August 6, 1946, he married Lorene Senne in Greene, Iowa. He completed his career as a marketing manager at Illinois Bell. He lived for many years in Villa Park, Illinois, moving in 1980 to Mountain Home, Arkansas, where he spent the rest of his life. His skill in woodcarving was known beyond pipes as well. He died on April 17, 2016, at the age of ninety-two.
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Source: Pipedia, adapted under the CC BY-SA licence.