Mariner (Joe Mariner)

Mariner is the American workshop Joe Mariner opened in Napa, California in 1972, known for its freehand pipes. The workshop never turned into a factory: in 1974 annual output stood at around two hundred pipes, sold wholesale to a handful of tobacconists on the West Coast and in Chicago. Even so, the Mariner name became one of the most award-laden signatures of the American handmade pipe scene by the mid-1980s.

The Napa Years and Awards

The awards that made the maker's name span a short period. In 1980 he was voted Pipe of the Year at the Pipe Collectors Expo in San Francisco; in 1984, at the first congress of the Pipe Collectors International (PCI) association in Chattanooga, he won the title of Best American Pipe Maker, and at the second congress the following year he took both the Best Briar Freehand and Best Maker awards. At the national pipe shows held in 1986 and 1987 he was voted Best Maker and Best Freehand respectively. The judging in 1984 was done by twenty masters attending the congress, and in 1985 by retailers. At that same 1984 congress, Mariner was also among the first eight people PCI referred to as "kapnismologists" (pipe experts).

In these years the pipes were distributed through a network of shops running from Drucquer & Sons in Berkeley and Oakland to Iwan Ries & Co. in Chicago; tobacconists in San Francisco, Mill Valley, Sacramento, Fresno, Anaheim, and Los Angeles were also part of this network. According to the record, the first retailer to stock the maker's work was Drucquer & Sons in 1973. In 1980 a batch of freehand pipes reached a major tobacconist in Tokyo, where they were displayed alongside Dunhill and a Danish maker's pipes; it is said that exchange rates and Japan's import restrictions prevented this connection from turning into a lasting relationship.