Pipes by Cody Perkins

Pipes by Cody Perkins is a one-person pipe workshop operating in Edmonton, in Canada's province of Alberta. The brand name and the master's name amount to effectively the same thing: every stage from design to final polish comes from the same hand. The workshop is counted among the examples of independent North American pipe making that gained visibility in the 2010s.

The Workshop's Working Order

Production proceeds through individual burls on hand. Perkins does not start by choosing a shape but by weighing the material; only after assessing the size, outline, and grain texture of a briar burl is it decided which pipe that piece will become. Ordering the process this way means the workshop follows production that changes piece by piece rather than a fixed model catalog; since the grain pattern forms differently in every burl, no two pipes are exact copies of each other.

By the maker's own description, the workload divides into roughly three equal parts: about a third to the body, a third to the stem, and the rest to the finishing stage that turns the two parts into a matched whole. Stems are not chosen from ready-made rod; each is cut individually from German ebonite to suit its own body. Perkins used ready-made stems early in his career and has since abandoned the method entirely.