Old Nellie Pipes: Joe Nelson's Wisconsin Workshop

Old Nellie Pipes is the name Joe Nelson gives to the pipes he makes by hand at his workshop in a farmhouse in Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, in the United States. Nelson came to pipes as a craftsman at the end of a long life spent with wood; for that reason his brand reads less as a factory tradition than as the story of a one-man bench.

From Carpentry to the Bench

Nelson's introduction to briar dates to 2005; at that point pipes became the latest addition to the list of pursuits of a craftsman with more than forty years of woodworking behind him. His attending the major pipe gathering in Chicago is cited as the turning point that turned this interest into ongoing production; over time Nelson made both instrument-making and pipe making his full-time work.

The experience built up in earlier years came from two directions. Nelson made custom cabinets and furniture semi-professionally, and renovated the 120-year-old farmhouse he lives in with his own hands. He turned to stringed-instrument making (luthiery) in 1995, and at the start of 1998 fitted out his workshop for this work and began building and repairing instruments. His focus on steel-string acoustic guitars is the source of the measurement-and-finish sensibility that later carried over into his pipes.