Trever Talbert is an unusual sight to find in a French provincial town like Herbignac. Towering above the locals, clad in their flat caps and 'bleu de travail', his height is perhaps the first thing that marks him out as not quite in place. Or maybe it's the beard, in this country of small, mustachioed Frenchman. But when he opens his mouth, it's the gentle southern drawl that really gives him away, for Trever is an American, from North Carolina.

The reason that this accomplished American pipemaker is here in south Brittany, so far from home, is just one word long. Morta.

Morta is 4,000-year-old fossilized bog oak, and it's one of those rare materials that can be perfect for making pipes. Brittany's Parc National de Brière is one of the few places in the world that it can be found and Trever had to come here to get it because he had no choice. Morta is part of the 'patrimoine' - France's national heritage - and that means it can't be exported outside the region in its raw state, it has to be made into something first. There are one or two sculptors working in the material, but pipemakers using it are a rare breed ­- in fact Trever knows of only one other in the world, in Austria.

Trever's story as a pipemaker begins back in North Carolina in 1995. In those days he was working as a computer engineer during the day, and in the evenings was trying to build a career as a professional illustrator. "The work was stressful and badly paid," he says. "And I felt that I was on a real treadmill - there was a very fast turnaround - and I was becoming disheartened. I wanted to do something more creative."

Then one day, on a beach holiday, he chanced upon a DIY pipe-making kit in a tobacco shop. "It was just a simple kit," he says. "A drilled briar block, a Dremel carver and a hand-held rotary. But I sat on the deck at the beach house and carved my first pipe."

His main memory of the event is that he got covered in sawdust, but it came out well enough and he found it fun to smoke a pipe that he'd made. Nevertheless, he thought little of it at the time. Trever had already been smoking a pipe since 1990, introduced to it by his friend Paul Tatum, who has since become a pipemaker himself. His first purchased pipe was a no-name basket pipe and he'd then gone on to collect quite a few other types. However, he was finding the business of collecting a little frustrating. "They were either classical and practical, or extravagant and impractical with no draw and weird drilling," he says. "There didn't seem to be anything in between." Perhaps that's why he bought a few more kits and carved a few more pipes. At any rate, pretty soon he found he was enjoying himself.

This was in the days before the pipe market on the Internet: "Although the Internet had been around for a while, the pipe community was quite conservative and most of the pipe shops and collectors regarded the idea of websites as a passing fad," says Trever. "I didn't know that artisan pipe-makers even existed. But I was a member of a pipe-smoking group on AOL and when I mentioned pipe-making, by an extraordinary stroke of luck someone put me in touch with Paul Perri."

Perri, by then in his 80s, was a second-generation pipemaker in California and was at first reluctant to talk to this stranger from NC. "But I pestered him rotten," admits Trever. He phoned him, wrote to him and sent him pictures of his pipes, and luckily Perri liked them and agreed to help Trever improve his pipe-making skills. At this time, Trever admits, he was "still playing - I was making pipes as Christmas presents, etc, and still buying the stems". Nevertheless, he was clearly onto something, as even these early pipes are now selling for large sums on E-bay. Over the next few years there followed reams of correspondence, handwritten on yellow legal paper as Perri poured out the wealth of his knowledge. "He was an amazing man," says Trever. "He taught me how to select briars, how to make custom tools and sent me pages of drawings on how to drill. He also sold me good briar from his stock."

The next turning point in Trever's pipe-making came in 1997 when he decided to enter a global competition sponsored by Pipes and Tobaccos magazine. The best entries were taken to the New York pipe show. At this point, pipe-making was still a hobby, but to Trever's surprise, he won two categories in the competition, with just one freehand pipe. The P&T article that followed on the contest generated huge interest in his work. "By late 1998 I was swamped with orders," he says, "so I bit the bullet and decided to switch to pipe-making full time."

Trever hit on the idea of using his computer knowledge to set up a website to sell his work online, took out a business loan and started working from his garage. The site, www.talbertpipes.com, now gets an amazing amount of hits, and Trever not only sells his pipes direct and via auction on the site, he's used it as a repository of general pipe knowledge. Smokers can find detailed information on types of briar, the smoking qualities of morta and Trever's methods of production, while even non-smokers are being drawn in by his very funny and honest accounts of an American finding his feet in France.

Although Trever modestly claims not to know that he has a style ("Ask a collector," he says), his trademark is his flowing, organically shaped briars. "I do tend to prefer sensuous shapes and organic curves rather than geometric designs," he admits. "I steer clear of panel-sides and square sides. Although their work is different from mine, I do particularly like the style of Danish pipemakers such as Kent Rassmussen and Tom Eltang - I like that wild, grain-focused flamboyant, dramatic look. But although I love swapping ideas and talking with other pipemakers, I don't look to them for stylistic inspiration. I just prefer to let the designs pop out of my head with as little influence as possible from the styles of others."

Nor does he have any particular preferences for ebauchon or plateau. "I'm looking for a curve or dynamic element rather than color or grain," he says. "I investigate each piece of briar thoroughly, to see what shape wants to come out - you have to listen to what the wood wants to be and I'm happy to change direction if the wood dictates it. I do sketch ideas, but I don't do any elaborate pre-planning on particular pieces. I suppose I have a success rate of about two out of three - about a third of the time, you'll be drilling away and find a huge fault that can't be fixed." He does sometimes stain briar pipes on the exterior only, using aniline dyes or natural oils, or even coloring derived from tobacco - an example can be seen in his Dagon Hallowe'en pipe.

Trever settled down to life as an artisan, but after a few years of full-time pipemaking, by 2001 he realized he was itching for a change. Talbert briar comes from a range of different sources. "I don't believe there's only one good source," he says. "I've bought from Algeria, Greece, Spain and Italy - even Corsica." But getting good quality briar had become something of a bugbear. "It's very frustrating trying to obtain good briar when you live so far from its source," he says. "It's time-consuming and expensive to visit the mills in person to pick out blocks, and you can't rely on doing it remotely. I also had to order everything in bulk."

It was at this point that the Internet came into play once again. Trever had built up a wide range of contacts online, and via this online community, he discovered that a French pipemaker, Patrice Sèbilo, was looking to sell his pipe-making business in Brittany, northern France. Trever and his wife Emily had occasionally toyed with the idea of living abroad, perhaps somewhere like Ireland, but a non-English-speaking destination had never crossed their minds. Nevertheless, they got together their passports and headed for France.

"We liked the look of the business," says Trever. "Pipes have been made in the Brière for generations, but strangely no-one in France seemed interested in buying the business. France just does not have the sort of artisan pipemakers that are commonly found in Germany, the UK, Denmark, Italy, and the US. In morta, Patrice had access to a unique material, and he also had a remarkable workshop with some incredible tools that are no longer made - drill presses, drilling machines, even machines such as fraises, custom-made for pipe-making. As well as the morta, the business came with a huge stock of briar - enough to keep us in business for years, so we lucked out rather."

Trever and Emily went back to the US and after some hard thinking, made an offer, which was accepted. They then found themselves embroiled in paperwork for months. "We had to be very determined," says Trever. "The red tape was a nightmare, because my good US credit rating counted for nothing in France, and lots of the paperwork had to be done in person at the French consulate in Atlanta, seven hours drive away." The Talberts ended up with two phone-directories-worth of documentation, including five-year business plans and non-arrest records, but in spring 2002, they finally found themselves the new owners of both a house and business in France.

The culture shock, says Trever, was "gigantic". Neither of the couple had previously lived outside the US and they happily admit that there are aspects of French life that drive them crazy. Apart from France's notorious red tape and tortuous small-business regulations, the mist, rain and fog that add up to Brittany in winter was a complete shock to these Southerners. "We had no idea how much shorter the days would be in a Northern European winter," says Trever. "We'd never encountered anything like it and there were days when we thought: 'What have we done?'."

France has many excellent qualities, but even fans would allow that it's also a highly chauvinist country, proud of its language and culture, which can make incomers feel somewhat lost. "Every single thing you can think of is different," says Trever, "from the food to the road system. We'd never encountered street markets and live eels before, and I'm still too scared to go into the charcuterie."

To complicate matters, just as there was no turning back in this massive change in their lives, the Iraq war started. This made the Talberts fear both anti-American hostility from the locals, since France was opposed to the US action, and anger from US customers who, for a time, took against everything French. In the event, fears on both counts proved groundless. The business didn't suffer and the locals proved welcoming and friendly.

"Amusingly," says Trever, "the French seem to have adopted us as French pipemakers, while Americans still view us as "American pipemakers living in France". The Talberts are now fully settled into both the business and their new way of life - though it's greatly enlivened by the odd parcel of buttered popcorn from home and weekly webcams with the family.

Trever still sells the majority of his pipes online, but the business also came with a small retail shop, where he exhibits his own pipes and those of other makers, especially in materials in which he doesn't work, such as meerschaum and clay. Behind the shop is the large, well-lit workspace, where Patrice's "wonderful" tools enable Trever to drill out stummels and stems with ease. This, he says, frees up more time for him to work on his artisan pipes, which now include, for the first time, morta.

Even keen collectors of briar pipes could be forgiven for not having heard of morta, for although it can be found in small pockets across Europe, the difficulty of extracting and working it makes pipes in the material very rare. Trever's morta, harvested from trees fossilized in the acid waters of the Brière, is a dense, mineral-rich substance, heavy to lift and cool to the touch. It's black in color but of different shades, sometimes greenish, sometimes grayish, and it definitely feels like stone, not like wood - in this aspect it resembles coal or amber rather than briar.

Trever has the rights to harvest the morta himself, stomping through the marsh in his waders every autumn, and he also dries it himself, a process that takes two years and careful monitoring. All this handwork, he admits, makes the cost of a morta pipe rather high compared with a briar, but not to a degree that would deter a serious collector. Because of the cracking of the material during fossilization and drying, the morta blocks are very small and thus the vast majority of morta pipes are currently also small. However, Trever is experimenting with larger blocks and slower drying processes that he hopes will enable him to produce larger bowls in a few years time.

"Morta is an exciting material," says Trever. "It has an open grain, from the age rings of the original tree, which gives a satin finish when polished, and it has fewer pits than briar. However, it's much more difficult to turn smoothly, and it wants to chip quite badly. Thus far I have found it easier to do the bowl shaping later by hand, using sanding discs, though the bowls heat up quickly, like when you're working with metal, so I have to take a lot of care not to burn myself."

Trever says that although all of the stems on the Talbert Briars remain handcut, it's a matter of compromise whether he uses handcut stems on the morta pipes. "If I made all of the mortas with handcut stems the combined labor would make even the tiniest ones cost $300 or more and the prices of the large pieces would run into the stratosphere," he says. "As I have little desire to become a $2,000 pipemaker, I've compromised and split the stem work according to the sizes of the pipes themselves. This keeps the smaller pieces relatively affordable while providing higher-end collectors with the quality of materials and workmanship that they expect."

Morta gives a very different smoke from briar, says Trever. "It's more musty and smoky, but not at all harsh. It gets hot, but it would be hard to burn out, and it stands up to a lot of smoking without getting rank and soggy like briar. Morta pipes also build cake like mad and they form a good cake inside the bowl after only a month or two of regular smoking."

Morta smokes best with English tobaccos, he believes, to which it imparts a richness deeper than most briars. But Trever is a fan of English tobaccos generally, with his favorites being Samuel Gawith & Co's 1792 blend and Bracken Flake. Morta customers, who have snapped up the pipes keenly since Trever began production, have described the smoking experience in various ways - as 'bright' or 'sweet'. But the general agreement is that morta is buried treasure waiting to be discovered by the pipe-smoking community.

"The flavor of the blend seems more direct than a briar smoke," said one guinea-pig. "I can't really say that there is a taste imparted, as much as there is a different quality to the smoke itself. It is crisp - more detailed, if you will - where smoke from a briar might be softer, but less revealing."

In terms of looks, the finish on the mortas can be smooth or sandblasted. Smooth pipes include Trever's prototype 'Bettafish' and his first production model 'Lionfish', where he combined the dark morta with pale olive wood. These are long, elegant pipes with churchwarden stems and a beautiful balance in the hand. In the smooth finish he is also now experimenting with the prince-shaped 'mini mortas'.

Sandblasted mortas have a more masculine, rugged look, such as seen in Trever's favorite personal pipe (currently nameless). In this finish, the morta appears anthracite-black and has an attractively bright glitter. Morta also makes beautiful beads and Emily - a jeweler who is now also working as a pipe-maker herself - incorporates the material into her designs.

"Emily is making more and more pipes now," says Trever, "and it's becoming clear that she's taking her own direction. The craftsmanship has to be identical, because we're both selling under the Talbert name, but I can see that her work, though perhaps less flamboyant, is more meticulous than mine."

Trever hasn't given up on briar, of course, especially having inherited a massive collection of stummels and blocks with the business, and he now produces several different types of briars: Ligne Bretagne are his entry-level pipes, which he creates from existing stummels and vulcanite stems made, perhaps in St Cloud, "who knows when, or by whom?". Some are available with horn stems from France's Jura region, which are no longer made. Trever drills out and assembles the pieces, creating and shaping a cohesive pipe, and they sell as a good mid-range smoke. Trever is not generally in favor of filters, but alone among Talbert pipes, some of the Ligne Bretagne have 9mm activated charcoal filters.

Then there are the Talbert Briars, which are unique and fully handmade, taking 12 hours or more to create. These are Trever's hallmark pipes, with the curving, organic shapes for which he's become known, and the finish can be smooth or sandblasted. On these briars he tends to use acrylic stems, which he prefers for their greater resilience. "Acrylic doesn't turn green at the tip like Vulcanite," says Trever. "People think of acrylic as hard, but that needn't be true." Trever and Emily are also now experimenting with casting their own acrylic for bands, stems etc. These preliminary castings are brilliantly colored and marbled with flecks of gold, and should add a delicious, jewel-like quality to the finished pipes. Trever is not currently taking commissions on the Talbert Briars and still has a backlog of orders to fulfill from the years when he did.

A sub-division of the Talbert Briars, the Hallowe'en pipes, are perhaps the pipes for which Trever is best known. "These pipes stem from a time that I got quite bored with pipe-making," says Trever. "I've always loved the grotesque, and myths and legends, and the work of people like Dali, so inspired by this, I started making a few truly strange pipes. Right from their inception, they've gone down extraordinarily well."

The Hallowe'en pipes are almost impossible to describe. Sinuous, sinister, sometimes labyrinthine in their complexity, each piece is unique and Trever will scarcely admit to how many hours go into making each one - polishing alone can take more than 20 hours. Although they make beautiful ornaments and they're more valuable if not smoked, he says he hopes people do smoke them. "I spend a long time getting the draw right," he says. "They are made to be used, not just sit on a shelf."

With names such as The Mountains of Madness, the Hallowe'en pipes have become the annual highlight of his output and he's produced them every year since 2000, selling by auction from his website, where they fetch prices ranging into thousands of dollars.

In 2003, for the first time, Trever added morta to the Hallowe'en range, in the shape of the Night Gaunt (see pic), and it will be interesting to see how morta will shape his output in the future. Certainly, having access to this unique material has only served so far to enrich the already plentiful repertoire of this very talented pipemaker.