November 22nd - I am ON VACATION! This is the first time I have taken off work in a non-business-related (Pipe shows) way since 2001. Ack. If you write and don't get a reply, please be patient - I'll get back to you when I'm back at work, but Emily and I are spending the next few days relaxing with family.

November 10th - I have a small Ligne Bretagne update coming shortly, but wanted to post first a quick note that I've added some pics of our Halloween blowfish to our Halloween pipes page. Also, I made up a few desktop wallpapers from the pics of it, and they're on the Halloween page too. If anyone wants to grab any of the wallpapers, get them soon, because I will probably be taking the Halloween page down in a week or so, till next year.

October 31st - Happy Halloween! While the Halloween pipes have taken up most of my time this month, a few other pipes have gotten finished among and around them. I've just posted four new pipes to the Ligne Bretagne catalog, and one new Goblin just in time for trick or treating! The LBs kick off our big goal for November - Keeping the Ligne Bretagne page stocked. It irks me that the site has been sold out of everything for so long, so we're starting a dedicated drive to keeping something in the LB catalog at all times. Once we seem to have some steady inventory available there, the next focus will be on adding goblins and keeping at least a few goblins available on a regular basis. I hope everyone has a great time tonight, and that good scares are enjoyed by all!

October 8th - Working on Halloween pipes fulltime now. I have just posted something interesting to the Talbert catalog, though, a matched set of briar and morta estate pipes I did back in 2002, during our first year in France. Pipe & Pint got hold of these, and I thought they might be particularly interesting to Talbert collectors for their story (See catalog description). Also, they're not the usual estate pipes, as I have fully restored both to "Like new" condition, including re-sandblasting, shaping, and much overall technical improvement more in line with my current techniques than with our struggling situation in 2002.

October 1st - CORPS - I am just about packed and ready to head off to the Richmond pipe show. The pipes and tobaccos are packed, I have books to read, sketchbooks, toys, house sitters arranged, and am looking forward to a fun weekend. I will check in from time to time, but most email will need to wait until I'm back again. I am taking exactly ONE PIPE to the show to sell.. It's ridiculous, but sales have been so good since we re-opened our site that I literally have no inventory to take along. On the plus side, I'll have more free time to wander the floor, talk to people, and help out with the Pipe & Pint table. I'll be posting show updates to our Facebook account and to my Twitter account, both of which can be followed from the sidebars below, if anyone is curious to hear my show commentary.

Update! You sharp-eyed visitors may notice a new menu item above, over to the far right. I've just posted this year's Halloween pipes page, with some info about the pipes and a bunch of pics, including a seasonal wallpaper. I'll be posting more pics of the pipes as they are finished over the course of the month, and will also be linking the similarly-themed pipes that Stephen Downie is doing for maximum Halloween madness.

September 27th - I've just posted a small update to the Ligne Bretagne catalog, the last we'll post before I leave for the CORPS show. There are four new pipes, two blasts and two smooths, with the sandblasts showing off a bit of the enhanced capability of the new compressor. I'll probably bring these pipes to CORPS too, if they don't sell during this week, so I may yank them back out of the catalog for the weekend. If you see one you absolutely love, grab it before it goes off to the pipe show!

I've also finished the first Halloween pipe, and need to spiff up its photos to show it off here and on our Facebook page. It came out pretty well, I think, especially considering that it has been many years since I last made any Halloween pies. It was a daunting project, really, after all this time, but I'm glad to find out that my imagination is still just as bizarre as always. It's a blackened rendition of a Hungarian shape, or at least a Hungarian that's being devoured by..... something...

In other news, I mentioned on my Facebook page that I've recently picked up an e-pipe and e-"cig" to play around with. I'll post a pipe blog entry on these eventually, though I don't know if I'll have time before the show. I've been meaning to investigate these little devices for a couple of years now, and am happy to finally have them in my hands. For those who aren't familiar with the concept, the e-devices are replacements for traditional tobacco-burning forms of smoking like cigars and pipes. I realize with that line alone, that all the old grognards will immediately begin to puff up in resistance, but really they're very handy little things, and ideal as pipe substitutes in a number of situations where smoking a pipe would be problematic or just plain annoying (Wind, shirt pockets, burning ash spillage, etc). Their renditions of tobacco flavors seem to be pretty poor so far, but they do aromatics excellently, and my study has smelled like butter rum for the past week. I'll delve into the subject a good bit more whenever I get around to the blog posting.

 

September 7th - Halloween is coming...

I've just posted the first (and only, at least for open sale) Talbert 2010 Halloween pipe in the Talbert catalog. I'm booked up on commissioned requests for Halloween pipes and I strongly suspect they will keep me busy right through Halloween at this point, so most likely there will be no other Halloween pipes for open sale. Next year, I'll start this project a LOT earlier...!

In other news, I've also posted 5 new Ligne Bretagnes to our LB catalog, including the very first pipe to be sandblasted with our company's new compressor - Read the full story here, if you haven't already. It is incredibly nice to have access to a powerful compressor again, and most likely I'll be sandblasting everything in sight now, with the slightest excuse, so our pipe output should rise though the proportion of smooths will probably decline, at least for a while.

My apologies for the long delay since the last update, but we've been on a semi-vacation during a big chunk of August - Our first actual "relaxation period" since 2001, even though we did not actually go anywhere. I've also been spending a fair bit of time compressor shopping and handling the delivery and setup of the thing, as well as helping out a bit with Pipe & Pint's website. P&P has lost their webmaster, so I'll be working with them for a little while to help keep their site updated and current. Between that, my Halloween pipe orders, and taking time out to visit every autumn fair and carnival and haunted house within driving distance, it looks like a couple of busy months ahead!

July 20th - A small update this evening - I've just posted two new Ligne Bretagnes, a sandblasted bent Prince and a smooth "pumpkin", for want of a better shape description. I don't do many of those pumpkins, as they're a lot of labor hours on a Ligne Bretagne budget, but they are one of my favorite LB shapes. Otherwise, work continues on the first little "intro" Halloween pipe to be posted soon, and I'm about ready to start taking orders for this year's Halloween pipes. This is, I must caution, going to be very much a "Serious Buyers Only" order process, due to the sheer number of inquiries I tend to get about Halloween pipes from folks unprepared to pay their prices once the pipes are done.

July 15th - Those with sharp eyes may notice that the logo up top has changed. The story behind that can be found in this blog entry.

July 8th - New updates! I've just added three new Ligne Bretagnes to the LB catalog, and one rather exotic Talbert to the Talbert Briar catalog. The LBs should please the classics lovers, as all three are straight and as traditional as you can get... Well, unless you count the green Dublin. Still, shouldn't all Dublins be green? The Talbert is another story - It's a huge thing, quite unusual and extremely dynamic. I suppose it could be described as a REALLY radical horn. I'm working on a few particularly challenging Talbert Briars this month to try and get accustomed to doing more complex work again, in preparation for this October. It's a little nerve-wracking, since this is certainly not the economy for very high-end work, but all I can do is cross my fingers, do my best, and hope the latest pieces will find buyers. We've been selling a lot to European buyers lately given the euro-to-dollar advantage, though that seems to be in a steady slide now - For what it's worth, I'd advise any European collectors looking for deals to grab them sooner rather than later, as I would not be surprised to see the euro reach closer parity with the dollar by later this year.

On a personal note, our mail forwarding from France has finally expired - No more discount catalogs from Super U in the mail, alas! It's hard to believe we've been back for a year now. I plan on being at CORPS this year - This time, thankfully, getting there via my own US driver's license (It's amazing how easy it is to get a license here).

 

June 28th - Three more new Ligne Bretagnes have been added to the catalog. They're a mixed bunch - a poker, a bulldog, and a unique sort of bent Canadian. I had to make one of the pokers after some recent discussions on Smokers' Forums about the origins of this particular shape. I had hoped to have a new Goblin or two to post now also, but they're a bit delayed and I wanted to go ahead and at least get these three up before the end of the month. In other news, we just received our first order of LB pipe bags from our new US supplier. In green, of course (There will be other colors too). Eventually, as money permits, I intend to get some custom bag stamps made for these to differentiate the regular LBs from the Goblin bags, but that's still in the monetary future as we work to get established again.

 

June 19th - New Ligne Bretagnes are up. There are three new standard shape LBs (one "Bing" in a golden-black contrast finish, one bulldog with horn stem, and a large billiard), plus I've also posted the first Ligne Bretagne Collector to be finished here in our US workshop. We've actually had this stummel drilled and roughed ever since 2008, but just never had the chance to finish it, so it made the trip back to the states with us. Those curious or unfamiliar with the Ligne Bretagne Collector grade pipes can read more about them here. I hope to get some more LBs finished up soon - The catalog keeps selling out so quickly, I can't seem to keep them in stock! Plus, I still need to get some new Goblins posted too...

It's a gorgeous summer here now. It rained for something like five weeks straight recently, giving me serious Brittany flashbacks, but it finally seems to be diving full-tilt into proper NC, which is to say, 95 degrees and 90% humidity. I hope someday some of our French friends can visit us over here, but I would never invite them during the summer!

June 10th. More new pipes! We seem to be gradually settling into a decent working pace now. I've just posted four new Ligne Bretagne Princes to the Ligne Bretagne catalog. These LB Prince stummels seem to consistently be of excellent quality, better than many of the other LB shapes - Almost all of them can be finished as smooths, for instance, and they uniformly have interesting grain. Also, the Talbert Horn that I previewed on our Facebook business page is now posted to the Talbert catalog. GRAIN! It's a gorgeous thing - quite unusual and distinctly my own interpretation of the horn concept. Finally, for those who may be curious, I posted a recent blog entry on the steps involved in making a Morta Cetacean pipe, laid out in comicbook-style photo captions. That's all for the moment - Next up, more Goblins and the first Ligne Bretagne Collector made in the USA.

June 1st - One small addendum! I am dropping the comments section from this front page. It hasn't been used much since the first opening of the site, and I never was able to work out how to get the comments to stick to the correct postings for each update (Comment code available online seems to fall into two categories - too simple to do the job, or so complex I can't begin to understand it. C'est la vie...). All in all, more bother than it's worth, so it's gone unless there is some big outcry to bring it back.

May 31st - New pipes are up! Not many, though - just three new Ligne Bretagnes, but one of those will be of particular interest to anyone who likes our LB Fat Dwarf shape. There may also be a new Talbert later - It's another green Frogpool, much like the original, that was done for a request. If the fellow passes on it, look for it here... and it is a marvelous example of the green breed, if I do say so! Future updates will be a lot more like this, with a few pipes going up more often, rather than such long delays between entire catalog postings. At the moment I'm working on a couple of Goblins for requests, but hope to add another couple to the catalog, and also get some new tampers and stands and morta pens posted in the not-too-distant future.

Also possibly of interest, Emily wrote the first part of her "One Year On' articles for our blog, detailing some of the culture shock of returning to the USA after seven years abroad. That link can be found below, along with a new article I just wrote about sandblasting. We've had to adapt to a lot of changes in methods since getting this new workshop up and running, but the massive change in sandblasting hardware has been one of the biggest challenges, and I've written a bit about how we are dealing with the new limitations and using them to spur different creative directions.

Finally, for those of you who follow my personal Facebook profile (poor souls), I hope you enjoyed the nice photo gallery I recently posted about our first Breton dinner here in the states! It was really nice to have a proper caramel ice cream crepe again...

 

May 19th Addendum! Well, half of yesterday's new Talberts are already gone, which is always nice. I post today with one minor change to the site - I've switched from using Intense Debate's comment system to using Disqus. I am hoping this will resolve the strange effect occuring under Intense Debate, where comments would be attached to different variation of the main page depending on how visitots had them bookmarked. We'll see... New comment entry is down at the bottom of the page.

May 18th, 2010. Welcome! We have finally reached the last part of our website catalog to open, the Talbert Pipes catalog. Unlike in past times, the Talbert Mortas and Briars are together in the same catalog page, and priced and graded along the same guidelines, since they are now fully equivalent to each other in terms of design and craftsmanship. All mortas now feature fully handcut stems, for example, and the designs will be a bit more fluid and sophisticated than past mortas, as well as incorporating further structural improvements to help them stand the long-term test of time. I've certainly never posted anything quite like this month's Morta Cetacean before! This first catalog selection is mainly smooth pipes, with one Signature grade briar and one sandblast to bracket the price range. In future, look for more blasts, but I wanted to open the catalog with some really nice smooth pipes to start with.

Photo-hounds may enjoy the greater number of pics accompanying each of the new Talberts - as befits their higher pricing, I felt it was only fair to provide more views and angles of them, to help an undecided buyer be sure about his decisions. The only pics I'm not so pleased with are the close-ups of the tamper that's included with the Signature grade, but I hope it is represented well enough in the other photos to be discernible.

Now that all three of our catalogs have been opened, look for quicker updates in the future. I doubt there will be any sudden huge increase in available pipes, though some small speed improvements are certain as we get more accustomed to the new workshop. Mostly, though, I hope to update more frequently with smaller numbers of pipes, mixing and matching between brands to try and keep some stock available in each catalog rather than having everything constantly be sold out. The Ligne Bretagne and Goblin catalogs have suffered a bit during the focus on finishing up the Talberts for posting.

 A "One Year On" blog article is coming up soon, maybe this evening. Now that we've been back in the states for a year, I have a lot of observations to write about, and am spurred to jot them down after receiving a wonderful surprise box of French goodies yesterday from our friend Claudie, back in Brittany (Included - Crepes, gallettes, Guerande local-made caramels, local-made caramel sauce, local-made butter cookies, and lots more). Future cultural writings, such as they are, will be posted in the Pipe Blog instead of the old "Life in France/America" that I closed down - It just didn't make sense to try and update two blogs when I could update one more frequently by blending the subjects together. This does not mean that the Pipe Blog will suddenly get buried in articles about culture, it just means that there will be more semi-off-topic breaks from the previous totally-pipe-focused postings.

Thank you all very much for your time, your patience, and your help in making our return to business happy and profitable! Here's to many good years in the future!

April 21st, 2010

Welcome to our second update of the new website! Today we open the Goblins catalog for sales. I've just posted 6 brand new, USA-made Goblins, so take a look! The Goblins aren't the only new pipes, though - We've also got two new Ligne Bretagnes posted, including a different variation of the popular Fat Dwarf shape that's a bit smaller and more classical. I will probably post Ligne Bretagnes like this from now on, with a few new ones going up alongside each catalog update of the higher-grade pipes. I'll do my best to keep the catalog stocked with something at all times, though this isn't always possible.

I have to add that I'm really pleased with the photography quality of the pipes in this update. Our lightbox is helping a lot to get reliable pics, and it's amazing how much time is saved when I can count on getting some good shots from the very start, without much fiddling with lighting and such. The Goblins presented some new challenges as far as reflections went, though, with weird curves and shapes that kept wanting to be all hot spots.

As I write this, we only have one handmade pen remaining in stock, which I confess to being really pleased about, since I wasn't sure if our pens would sell at all. We'll be doing more of these as time permits, especially after the Talbert Briar catalog is opened, but it will probably always be a balancing act - We'd like to become known as quality penmakers also, but it's the pipe sales that keep the cash flowing so it's hard to set aside time to expand our penmaking.

 The only ongoing difficulty we are having with the new website is with the comments system below - It seems to store comments and link them to different pages depending on the link a poster arrived here at, so visitors to www.talbertpipes.com post will see different comments than those who arrive here at www.talbertpipes.pair.com. I'm tweaking the code a little this time, maybe it will fix the problem. By contrast, our new online payment system works beautifully, so it's much more convenient to shop with us today than ever before. And speaking of shopping, we're getting our first sense of international shipping times from the USA - around 10 days to Korea, 7 days to France, and (oddly) 14 days to Germany. I guess Germany has the fiercest border guards.

Anniversary!  This weekend will be the one year anniversary of our arrival back in the USA. I can't believe a year has passed already, it seems like yesterday, and we've been so busy we've barely had a chance to take a breath, but life here has mostly been all good. There will be a Pipe Blog article posted fairly soon that will talk more about this, and share some cultural observations on what it's like to be a returning expat.

And that's it for this update!

  April 1st, 2010

Addendum! It turns out there was one mistake in the Paypal purchase buttons we used - I had forgotten to reset the return links in them from our testing site, so when many of our new buyers were returned here, they were met by the Bonkzilla 404 page. My apologies! The links have been fixed and it will work properly in future, and for everyone who bought a pipe or a pen this time around, it should have taken you back HERE.

March 30th, 2010 - Welcome to the opening of the all-new Talbert Pipes website! A lot of folks have followed the news and changes on the site through its various beta versions, but if you haven't seen the new site until now and want a quick rundown on all the changes, check out this news post. I had hoped to wait until we had full stock in all catalogs before opening the site, but alas, bills demand quicker action, so as of today we have opened the Ligne Bretagne catalog and the Pens/Misc catalog for business. Next up will be new Goblins, in about a week or so, with a new assortment of Talbert Briars to follow a couple weeks later. I'm actually glad now to be doing it in this step-by-step way, because I was not looking forward to having ALL of the pipes to photo and write pages for at once, and this will break up the work more enjoyably. For now, I hope these initial Ligne Bretagnes will please, and that the oddities on our Misc page will amuse.

The last big challenge to get sorted was our photography, and we've finally built ourselves a photo lightbox complete with true-color lights. Unfortunately, most of the items in the Misc section were photographed before we had this, but I hope the pipe pics of the Ligne Bretagnes will be a nice window into what our catalog photos will be like in future.

  Changes and Additions:  Aside from the photo improvements, there are some new items on the site even for those who followed us through the beta work. At the bottom of this post you will see a comments section. This is new, and installed to allow closer feedback with customers and fans, so I can keep a better eye on what people like and don't like. It IS moderated, so please leave the flames at the door. I have no problems with constructive criticism, but spammers and trolls should go elsewhere.

I conceived of this home page as a central location for folks to follow all we're up to, and in that theme I have added a status box on the right which will relay all our updates from our Facebook business page. This way, even those who are not Facebook members can follow the latest news from our FB page. Under that is my personal Twitter stream, which will probably be useless most of the time, but occasionally may share an odd or funny tidbit now and then. Then we have a Formspring question box - Formspring is a service that allows one to host a personal "Questions and Answers" page, and I thought it might be fun to post a link here and allow visitors to ask me direct questions and read over the answers and all previous questions and answers (Just click the Formspring link to be taken to my Q&A page).

 Finally, you'll never have to worry about missing a potentially interesting blog entry because the latest headlines will be listed below, allowing one to quickly skim over the current articles to see if anything sounds interesting. All this social media stuff is a bit new to me, so it should be considered "Under Experiment".... Time will tell which bits remain and which bits get deleted due to lack of interest or maintenance hassle. That's all for now - Thank you for visiting, and Emily and I hope you enjoy our new website!