Nachwalter (Elliott Nachwalter Pipestudio)

Nachwalter is the brand under which American maker Elliott Nachwalter signs his handmade pipes under his own name. Trained in art history and photography, Nachwalter turned his profession into a craft and set up his workshop in Vermont. Though the brand runs today as a one-person studio, its name is still linked with the Briar Workshop, which served as a training ground in American handmade pipe history.

A Bench Set Up in Vermont

Nachwalter's first workshop was a small wooden structure fitted with a few basic tools in the town of Stowe in the late 1970s; sources give the founding year not as a fixed date but in relative terms such as "about twenty-five years ago." In these early years he briefly shared a shop in Stowe with Andrew Marks.

In the same period, the Briar Workshop was founded jointly with Jorg Jemelka, and the bench stopped being a solo pursuit. The involvement of Danish designer-maker Finn Meyan Andersen brought the workshop's freehand leanings into direct contact with the Danish School approach. Over the years, Brad Pohlmann, J. T. Cooke, and Carole Burns — craftspeople who would later become known under their own names — all worked there; in this sense the Briar Workshop is counted among the training benches of the American handmade pipe scene. Records show that some pipes from the workshop's period in Florida bear the "The Briar Workshop" stamp. It should be noted that the names Cooke and Burns also appear in sources as "Jim Cooke" and "Carol Burns."