2006 | 2005

2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997 | 1996

The Best of Talbert Briar in 1998

Since people seemed to be interested in these things I was making, I decided to set up a small website in 1998. Despite the fact that this was only a few years ago, I was one of the earliest online pipe-selling sites. Pipe sites were very unusual and most pipe retailers still regarded the web as the devil, or at least just a passing fad. I was only running mine for some spare change income but I wanted it to exist for more reason than just to sell my pipes, so I set up the first incarnation of the pipemaking tips library. If I remember correctly, this was just a few pages then. It was a lot of fun exchanging techniques with other amateur pipemakers and we all came up with some really bizarre ideas. Over the course of this year my pipes started to get popular, to my complete surprise. This was gratifying but unexpected, since in the beginning I was just hoping to sell enough pipes to pay for the website's $10/month hosting fee. Toward the end of 1998 I was working every evening and weekend to keep pace with demand.

• The Denethor		• The Pearl Frog		• The Tulip		• The Penguin
• The Valkyrie		• The UnNameable		• The Bishop		• The 1998 Yule Pipe