Piersel Pipes (Scottie Piersel)

Piersel Pipes is the one-woman bench of Scottie Piersel, working in Kansas City, Missouri, United States. The brand is known for a measured design approach faithful to classic shapes and for the thin-shanked pipes the maker developed herself. Piersel is one of the few women makers named on North America's handmade pipe scene; she also markets her work under the name "lady briar."

Founding of the Bench

Piersel entered pipe making not through the trade but through curiosity: she made her first pipe from a ready pipe kit and, within a short time, assembled the equipment to set up her own bench. The exact starting year is not on record; according to accounts it falls in the late 2000s. By the maker's own account, two strands were decisive in the early period: the regular feedback she got from makers around the Pipe Makers Forum, and the working relationship she formed with restoration specialist George Dibos, whom she knew from the Kansas City pipe scene.