J. T. Cooke

J. T. Cooke (James Tanner Cooke, b. 1949) is an American pipe maker who works at a one-man workshop in Vermont. Nearly all the pipes he produces have a sandblasted surface, and his production pace rarely exceeds one pipe a week on average. He is among the names most often cited in the shift of sandblasting — long regarded as a second-tier surface treatment — into a craft respected in its own right.

The Road to the Bench

Records show Cooke graduated from the illustration program at Rhode Island School of Design in 1972; he then worked as an art director at WCAX television in Vermont. He made his first pipe that same year, while trying to quit smoking cigarettes, using a pre-roughed ready block. In the mid-1970s he joined The Briar Workshop, which Elliott Nachwalter had founded in Vermont; when the workshop relocated to Florida, he chose to stay in the state. Together with Deb, his wife at the time, he did contract production and rough shaping work for outlets such as the Wilke pipe shop.

The defining period began with Barry Levin, who ran Levin Pipes International in Craftsbury. Here Cooke repaired thousands of estate pipes — taking them apart, measuring them, and cutting open the ones that couldn't be saved to examine their interior structure. His approach to airflow and interior workmanship took shape through this study; the idea of pouring his own acrylic mouthpiece also grew out of the need to make replacement mouthpieces. After Levin's death he moved to marketing under his own name. Years of repeated repair work led to a severe case of carpal tunnel syndrome, and he had surgery in January 2000, after which he gave up repair work entirely and returned solely to pipe making.