The Pipe Blog

My name is James Ashwell, AKA Ralph Mottes.
I've been making replica clay pipes for almost 4 years now, and have not properly documented a single bit of it. There are hundreds of photos and hours of badly filmed snippets of making, none of which is viewable by a wider audience. So, in the interest of protecting a critically endangared craft, rather than just making stuff for myself, here is this blog.
The plan is to fill the Pipe blog with everything pipes. History, classic making techniques, how I'm personally making them, and my plans to protect the craft through digitisation.
My partner, Beth, who is much better at putting pen to paper than me, has already written up a bunch of posts on the history of pipe making in the UK, and on a couple of pipe related trips we have taken together.
​But first, what the hell is LARPing?