Lindner (Michael Lindner)

Lindner is the brand of handmade pipes American maker Michael Lindner produced single-handedly from the early 2000s to the second half of the 2010s. Lindner grew up around Detroit; before entering the workshop, his background was in fine arts and design, rounded out with business studies. Production never grew beyond a one-man shop: roughly a hundred pipes a year, all from the same hand.

From Retail to Workshop

Lindner first entered the pipe world as a seller. The Piperack, which he founded in 1997, was one of the early internet ventures that gathered up estate (secondhand) pipes, restored them, and put them back into circulation. By 2000 he wanted to bring repair and restoration work in-house; the lathe he bought for that purpose sent him down an unplanned path. The first pipes to come off that same lathe turned his occupation from selling to making.

He learned the technique largely by trial and error. By his own account, four names guided him in the early years: Jimmy Cooke on machine setup, Trever Talbert on equipment and tool choices, John Eells on workmanship standards, and Paul Bonacquisti on matters such as chamber lining and lathe selection.