Steve Morrisette Pipes

Steve Morrisette Pipes is the brand of handmade briar pipes American maker Steve Morrisette produces at the workshop he runs by himself. Morrisette comes from neither a factory nor a formal apprenticeship: he entered the craft first as a collector, then took his place at the bench by visiting the American masters of his generation one by one.

Production is small-scale and comes entirely from one hand. In this respect he is counted among the generation of American workshop pipe making that gained strength in the 2000s, the generation that trained not master-to-apprentice but master-to-master.

Style, Material, and Stamp

Morrisette's design language stays close to the Danish school; he either applies classic Danish molds directly or interprets them freely. This school is known for its fluid lines that go beyond mold dimensions and its thin-walled, lightweight bodies. His pipes are mostly small in scale and light; they rest on proportional relationships and surface transitions rather than large volumes. How much work has gone into a body that looks simple in its details can only be told on close inspection. For the mouthpiece (stem) he favors German vulcanite, uses horn and wood as spacer pieces, and finishes the briar with staining schemes that bring out the grain. According to retailer profiles, the pipes carry the stamp "S M" within a circle.