Cooke, James T.: Difference between revisions

J. T.’s design language can be understood as based in part on classic English shapes—particularly the Dunhill Shell and Barling Fossils—and in part on his own interpretations of current and past popular shapes, or what French pipe critic Erwin Van Hove calls “contemporary classicism.” 4 It is easier to consider Cooke’s work, perhaps, if it is seen as  progressing in three organically evolving stages like that used to understand the work of many great composers and artists.  

In the transitional Middle Period, J. T. set up under his own name, abandoned repair work and hung out his shingle as an artisan increasingly dedicated to “the bastard child” (as he called it) of sandblasting. It ran from his first Pipe of the Year for Pipes & Tobaccos Magazine in 1999 until around the time of his second Pipe of the Year for the magazine in 2008.  

His work since then, the Late Period, demonstrates an increased dedication to executing classic shapes, the emergence of certain signature shapes, an affection for chubby shapes, a perfection of engineering and a sandblast execution without parallel.

J. T. has used a few stamps in small all capital letters at the mortise shank face to indicate the origin of his briar:

       OKF— “Old Knarly Friend”—briar from Morocco

       Yin and Yang Stem Stamp—Cooke’s identification marking on the stem  

By choice and good fortune, Cooke has followed the classic trajectory of continuous study and a long apprenticeship as journeyman before setting up shop under his own name. He made his first pipe in 1972 from a pre-carved block of briar, which he smoked while quitting cigarettes. He later carved it into a turbaned, bearded figural. 7   

In partnership with his ex-wife Deb, he worked for The Briar Workshop, made pipes for The Briar Workshop, Wilke pipe shop, did rough shaping for Mike Butera’s pipes and a line of a thousand to fifteen hundred pipes under the LPI Levin Pipes International stamp.8  

By 1990, the Cookes began marketing their own pipes. J.T.’s facility and artistry are on display in two sets of photographs sent to prospective pipe shops at this time, showing a striking cavalier figural of Abraham Lincoln, smooth and sandblast free hands, classic shapes and “Icicle” rustic and smooth combinations resembling Castello and Radice’s melted wax-style pipes. These photos show the range and sophistication of his work at this time, including the growth of his distinctive signature style based on his deep appreciation of classic English shapes . The bell calabash, horn, standing poker and bulldog are all shapes to which he will frequently return in his later work.

Barry Levin of Levin Pipes International (LPI) was a close friend of Cooke’s until his death and was instrumental in Cooke’s growth as a pipe maker, providing J.T. with the opportunity to study thousands of pipes as he restored them. An important outgrowth of his partnership with Levin was Cooke’s interest in creating reproduction stems, which would lead to creating his own hand-poured acrylic stems. 9

The transition to J. T.’s Middle Period is easily dated from the 1999 Pipe of the Year he agreed to make for Pipes & Tobaccos, following on the heels of the important 1997 interview with Chuck Stanion in that magazine. By this time sandblasting had become Cooke’s métier as an artisan. As Stanion writes,

J.T. designs his pipes to be sandblasted. That is, unlike those who try to make a smooth pipe and then sandblast it when necessary, he designs a pipe so the proportions will be correct after sandblasting. J.T. knows classic shapes and is a stickler. All that experience with Dunhill and Barling classics made him a devotee of traditional shapes. In my opinion, J.T. Cooke is nearly alone in his ability to make a perfectly proportioned, sandblasted Billiard . . . . His pipes can appear a little on the chunky side until you realize that you're just not accustomed to seeing sandblasted pipes with proper proportions. Generally, deep, craggy blasts are necessarily reduced from their original proportions. Not so with Cooke pipes. 10

Produced in an edition of 250 pipes, J. T. used the opportunity to “try to perfect his blasting technique” as Stanion recalls. “I learned something new with every pipe,” Cooke said. “Can you imagine what a perfect classroom that was? All the same classic Billiard shape, no confounding factors. I think I blasted all but six of those 250 pipes. That experience was like having the keys to the candy store. Total immersion in the blasting process. What an education.” 11 The overwhelming demand of creating this many pipes, however, led to severe carpal tunnel syndrome which required surgery in January of 2000. 12  

The Late Period, again while somewhat arbitrary, can be conveniently dated by the second Pipe of the Year for Pipes & Tobaccos magazine in 2008, reinforced in the ephemera on Cooke by an important double-page spread of his pipes appearing in the spring 2008 Uptown’s Smoke Shop catalog. In the catalog we see the mature, fully-developed style—not that Cooke hadn’t made such masterpieces before—but now, the pages seem to say, this is what Cooke does, who he is as a pipe maker.  

Notice that while there’s only one smooth shape on the page, it continues his abiding interest in classic English shapes. There’s also, however, a volcano and a hawkbill, shapes newly in vogue at the time of the catalog and important in testifying to J. T.’s interest in current fashion. The straight billiard—always a Cooke favorite—is also well represented. The Cobra Bulldog, which will be a Cooke signature shape, has also been developed by this time.  

Finally, notice the stem and stain work: in addition to black, the reproduction amber is also in evidence, as are the custom-color swirl stems in the volcano and the hawkbill (#4). The three bowl colors are also in evidence: the black stain  (a midnight purple), the brown (which seems to vary bowl by bowl) and the natural, the most difficult to produce.

Cooke also agreed to do a second Pipe of the Year for Pipes & Tobaccos for 2008, this time in a greatly-reduced number of only 50 pipes in the brandy shape.

While J. T.’s shape catalog has become more and more distinctive and uniquely his own over the past ten to fifteen years, there is constant experimentation and new shapes still appear with regularity. 13  For example, the Christmas Bell, a dublin bell with special stain and custom stem, has appeared since 2016, but only one is made annually, just before the holiday.

—J. T. Cooke 14

It goes without saying that pipe smokers are initially attracted visually to the pipes they choose to smoke. Far more important but either ignored or underestimated is a pipe’s engineering, on what’s going on inside the pipe. When J. T. parted from Briar Workshop upon their relocation to Florida to make his own pipes, he was, writes Chuck Stanion, “entranced by the possibilities of improved internal engineering and the reduction of smoke turbulence within a pipe.” 15  

The opportunity to work for Barry Levin of Levin Pipes International gave J. T. the opportunity he needed for an intensive period of hands-on study. As Stanion writes of the thousands of pipes Cooke refurbished for Levin,

As Stanion relates in the 2008 interview,  

[T]he mortise and tenon joint is carefully constructed, with the chamfered tenon reaching to the bottom of the mortise, where the smoke hole is slightly recessed to accept a tight fit with the tenon to reduce the collection of any residue or moisture. The smoke hole from the heel of the bowl all the way to the lip button maintains the same circumference, even with very flat bits, so there is no reduction in airflow that might cause condensation. 17

“Cooke’s curing method,” writes Chuck Stanion, “takes up to two weeks and reduces the weight of the briar from 4-9 percent, depending on the individual block, and his method cures primarily the smoke channel and tobacco chamber, providing flavorful briar that absorbs moisture, so it’s important to keep a J.T. Cooke pipe clean for that carefully developed system to do its job of providing a dry and effortless smoke.” 18 The curing process can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, depending on the block of briar, and is done after the lathe work has been done and chamber bored but before the sandblasting. Cooke’s propriety process is done in two stages by first forcing the resins and tannins to expand and second apply a special solution to dissolve the resins and tannins. 19  As J. T. explains to David M:

I know guys like to age their briar. Some say for 2 or 3 years. I learned in my experiments with Barry [Levin] that there is a lot of stuff in briar, even the best briar . . . .  So what I learned is that after I turn the pipes on the lathe, I put a dummy stem on them and I run them through a curing process, remove what residual tar and oils and sap is still in the wood, I leach that stuff out and then I dry the wood. Most cutters do an admirable job, because it’s a competitive industry like anything else, they do a great job of cleaning the wood as best they can. But they are cleaning 50 or 100 blocks at a time. And there is no way they can get all the stuff out. Plus, they are trying to get some stuff out of a big hunk of wood. I am trying to get the sap out of the turned pipe so it is a smaller process. The difference in a pre-cured block of wood and a post-cured block of wood is that I can drop the weight between the two between 6 and 9%. When I started actually weighing and charting the whole thing, I knew I was getting stuff out but it blew my mind that there was so much stuff in even the best block of wood. And it’s important because you want the block to be able to breathe. If you have a dry block that still has sap in it and over the years, the sap polymerizes. Once that happens, there is no way to get rid of it and it sets up like epoxy in the pores. The pipe will be heavy, not particularly absorbent. 20

This curing process and the proprietary bowl coating J. T. applies results in pipes that are not only deceptive in their weight—being lighter than seems possible—but offering incredible smoking experiences from the first match light.

Cooke writes, “Five stage blasting began around 1999. It’s never a hard and fast rule; it all depends on what the briar needs.” 21 In “Down this Blasted Path,” the short essay Cooke provides on his website, he details the stages:

1. The first stage shows me the over-all grain pattern and how the growth rings are oriented. This is where most (not all) pipe labels stop.

2. The second blast stage exposes and defines the hard and soft areas within the grain and ring patterns.

3. The third stage brings up even smaller patterns within each individual ring and details both hard and soft areas.

4. The fourth blast stage gently but firmly re-establishes the criss boundaries already created by previous blasting.

5. The fifth and final stage gives final detail to all the tiny individual fibers of wood. 22

Cooke has made his own hand-poured acrylic stem rod almost from the beginning of his work as a pipe maker. He works primarily with three colors: reproduction amber (his earliest), amber bark and black. He also, however, frequently uses ruby (a deep purple swirl) as well as creates custom color combinations.  

Even with J. T.’s standard colors, however, no two mixed-color stems will ever be alike, as the poured “colors can end up in all different locations and patterns on the stem.” 23 The uniqueness of such pipes is thus further enhanced, often strikingly so.  Because these are hand-poured acrylics, they require a little extra care. The buttons on his pipes can be chipped by hard clenching, so that  most devotees prefer to cradle their Cooke pipes rather than clench them.

Cooke was born in Vermont in 1949 and has one sister (a retired university professor) and two grown children. 24  His father was a biology teacher with exceptional DIY skills which the his son would inherit, later building his own house from scratch.25 As a child, J. T. experienced recurring high fevers from severe bouts of strep throat. In the interview with David M., he attributes his sickliness not only with developing his imagination but with giving him a certain existential outlook on life: “I had a certain appreciation for trying to enjoy every day because I never knew if it was going to be my last [which] gave me a certain amount of license to experiment and live life and pursue what I wanted to pursue, because nobody is guaranteed tomorrow.” 26

While Cooke’s earliest sandblasts involved a two-stage sandblasting process, as his career has progressed the blasting has evolved to three and then four or five stages, depending on the density of the wood and size of the bowl.  Since the 1990’s, J. T. has supported many pipe shows by taking a table and always has enjoyed talking to attendees and working with collectors.  Listening to his customers has led him to develop certain shapes like his classic bent bulldog. In 2010, working with Rich Esserman, Cooke utilized the lines of old Dunhill magnums and made his own style of Magnum bents and billiards. 34     

Cooke’s sandblasting and stem work have occasionally been misunderstood, the former because because the buttons are perceived too boxy or uncomfortable and the latter because it is somehow not true sandblasting but a kind of rustication highlighted by sandblasting. As for the stems, Erwin Van Hove in the French Pipe Mag in 2003 said “Cooke is . . . famous for his comfortable stems.” 35   

Cooke has undoubtedly been the catalyst in popularizing blasting so that the once lowly and “bastard son” of briar pipes is now seen on equal terms with smooth-finished pipes and even by many smokers to be preferred.  

Hanna, Fred J. “The Best Sandblasted Pipes Are Being Made by Americans,” The Perfect Smoke (NASPC Press, 2012), pp. 145-47.

Irwin, Mark. Cooke Ephemera (mailers to Uptown’s Smoke Shop with photos, 1980).

—. “The Tesla of Pipe Sandblasting,” Smokingpipes.com, The Daily Reader, August 3, 2018, accessed January 4, 2021.

J. T. Cooke

info@cookepipes.com

Burlington, VT 05401

1 Fred J. Hanna, The Perfect Smoke , 146; David M., “In A Class All His Own,” Tobacco Days, August 8, 2011. http://tobaccodays.com/2011/08/j-t-cooke-in-a-class-all-his-own/ accessed 1/4/2021; Chuck Stanion, “J. T. Cooke: The Tesla of Pipe Sandblasting,” https://www.smokingpipes.com/smokingpipesblog/single.cfm/post/jt-cooke-the-tesla-pipe-sandblasting , accessed 1/4/2021.

37 The Perfect Smoke, 146.

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