G. Batson Pipes (Grant Batson)

G. Batson Pipes is the pipe bench American craftsman Grant Batson runs in Nashville. Batson did not first sit down at the bench as a pipe maker but as an instrument maker; the years before he turned to the briar log were spent in a guitar workshop. This dual background is a common thread sensed in the precision of measure and surface in the work leaving his shop.

From Guitar to Pipe

Batson was born in Texas in 1975 and settled in Nashville in 1993. He built his first guitar with his father at age fifteen, a pursuit that later grew into a guitar company he founded with his brother.

The pipe, for him, was first a habit and then a profession: he had smoked a pipe since he was nineteen. Handing his share of the guitar company over to his brother opened the way for him to devote his working hours to a new material. According to sources, he began making pipes in 2012. He learned the craft at two separate benches: first with Todd Johnson, working in the same city, and then with Teddy Knudsen, a well-known name of the Danish school.