Reid Robertson (Robertson Pipes)

Reid Robertson is the American pipe maker behind the Robertson Pipes brand that bears his own name. He made his first pipes in 2021 in Asheville, North Carolina, and later moved his workshop to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Although he came to the bench relatively late, he has, in a short time, become one of the names recognized within the contemporary American artisan pipe scene.

The Road to the Workshop

Pipe making is not Robertson's first pursuit. By the records he was born in 1981 and grew up in Lawrenceville, Georgia. Also by the records, he studied music at Furman University in South Carolina, graduating in 2004; but he did not go on to make music his profession. Instead he spent a long period teaching English in various East Asian countries; his marriage to his wife Kelsey took place in Thailand during these years, and the couple returned to the United States in 2018.

His interest in the pipe, however, reaches back much further, to his childhood; having a pipe-smoking elder in the family fed this interest. He began smoking a pipe at eighteen; by the records, the first pipe to come into his hands was a Sasieni 4-Dot brandy given to him by his family. His interest in woodworking turned into an active pursuit in 2020, with a lathe his wife gave him, and his first pipes appeared the following year.