Whidbey Islander Pipes

Whidbey Islander Pipes is the name of a small-scale pipemaking operation run out of the town of Langley, on Whidbey Island in Washington State in the northwestern United States. Because the pipes were sold one at a time from the back counter of a shop, they never entered a wide distribution network; the brand is known mainly through the limited number of examples that have reached collectors.

The Shop and Its Founder

At the center of the operation was a tobacco and pipe shop that opened in Langley in 1972 and is recorded as the "Virginia Tobacco and Pipe Shoppe." Travers LaRue carved the pipes himself on the premises and sold them from the same location. The shop's operation ended in 1983. The maker's year of death is inconsistent across sources: pipe literature gives 1983, while accounts based on a local newspaper record point to 1982.

Total production thus spans a little over a decade. This brevity explains why the brand is seen so rarely; the number of examples in circulation is nowhere near comparable to the factory brands of the same period. Today the brand is known more by the name of the series it produced than by the maker's own name.