Author: claypiper

If you look through this blog, you’ll probably notice that most of my pipes are supported on little legs.  Why is this?

Well, if the pipe is an effigy pipe, then the reason is fairly obvious.  Animals (and people) usually have legs.  Many of these forms would look incomplete without these appendages.

But even if the pipe is an abstract form, I usually add feet to the pipe.  Most often, I add three legs, because a pipe supported by a tripod is inherently more stable than a pipe with any other number of legs.  Sometimes I even use three legs for an effigy pipe, for that very reason.  For example, you can look at this one– one of my current favorites.  It’s an effigy in the form of a baby bird demanding dinner– but unlike a real baby bird, this one has three legs.  The thinking here was that a pipe of this sort needs to be particularly stable, in order that its bowl can be packed without much danger of the pipe falling over during that activity.

In some cases, the feet are necessary in order to allow the pipe to sit upright at all.  The baby bird pipe would probably sit on its flat base if it didn’t have feet. On the other hand, my salamander pipes require feet not just for realism’s sake, but because a long skinny pipe with a heavy bowl will just fall over immediately when set down.

But what about the abstract pipes I make, most of which do have three little feet?  There are several reasons for this approach.  In the first place, stability is enhanced by three legs, the most stable form of suspension.  A pipe with a flat bottom may end up wobbling a bit, due to the way that high-fired porcelain softens and distorts in the heat of the kiln.

More important than that is the issue of tactile quality.  Pipes are used in the hands.  By putting little feet on my pipes, I am able to glaze the bottoms of the pipes, all except for the small areas where the legs touch the kiln shelf.  This is necessary with high-fired porcelain, because unlike lower-fired earthenware, porcelain cannot be held up from the kiln shelf with little spikes of high temperature metal.  True porcelain wares cannot have glaze where they touch the kiln shelf.  And in my view, the legs add tactile interest to the pipe when it is held; there is a pleasant contrast between the slightly textured touch of the feet where the porcelain is unglazed, and the sumptuous smoothness of the glazes I like.

Finally, feet give the piece a lift, both visually and in pragmatic terms.  It is easier to pick up an object which is lifted mostly above the surface it sits upon, if your fingers can more easily curl under the piece.  The feet make pipes easier to handle, and less likely to be dropped.  These pipes are, after all, porcelain, an inherently breakable material.  Anything that makes them less likely to be dropped is a Good Thing.

We had a wonderful time at our old farm in upstate New York, though because of the press of business we didn’t get to spend quite as long as we’d hoped.  While we were gone, Amazon notified us that our Amazon Handmade shop was up.  Because of Amazon’s policies, I have only been able to stock non-pipe items in that shop, but I’m adding items daily now that we’re home.  Now, the pipes are available for purchase here on this blog, as well as on my Etsy shop.

The North Country is a special place.  I was born in upstate New York, and our family has long had a camp on the St. Lawrence River near Alexandria Bay.  When we began to think about a place to spend the summers, both my wife and I wanted a place in the country where the seasons were bold, where the soil was good, where nature put on her best displays and where a lot of interesting things were going on.  We eventually started looking for property about 75 miles north of the family camp, in St. Lawrence County.  The area is home to four colleges, including my grandmother’s alma mater, St. Lawrence University, and Clarkson University, one of the premier science and technology schools in the country.  There are also two SUNY schools, one of them home to the world-renowned Crane school of music.  Montreal is a couple hours north of our little cabin in the woods.  The Adirondack State Park boundary is just a few miles east of our cabin, and the Park is a magnificent asset to anyone who likes the outdoors.

Another great advantage of the area is that back in the 70s, when the back-to-the-land movement was at its height, there was a pretty large influx of countercultural people into the area, and a lot of them stayed.  In other words, the woods are full of fellow ancient hippies, and they sponsor all sorts of interesting activities, from ecological and homesteading associations, to various events celebrating the beauty and diversity of the area.  There’s an excellent food co-op in the nearest little village, a great county library system, and a whole lot of really nice helpful people.  We’ve had our place there now for three years and I haven’t met a jerk yet.  I’m sure it will happen; jerks are always with us, but when it finally happens, I’m going to be very surprised.  Just one example from this visit: I wanted to buy a steel barrel for the rocket mass heater I want to build for the cabin.  I found a Craigslist item that seemed perfect.  When I drove to the address, the retired farmer met me in his barnyard with a huge sack of freshly picked McIntosh apples, and asked me “Do you like apples?”  I could tell you a hundred other pleasant anecdotes like this.

Our plan is to set a small building beside the cabin to serve as a studio, next spring.  I can’t wait.  I find the environment there to be extremely stimulating.  For example, we went for a hike down along the St. Regis River a couple days after a rain and the woods were full of weird mushrooms.  I plan to make a series of hand pipes based on mushrooms, as a result.  I’ll post some images here when the first batch comes out.

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