Tobacco pipe

A tobacco pipe, often called simply a pipe, is a device specifically made to smoke tobacco. It comprises a chamber (the bowl) for the tobacco from which a thin hollow stem (shank) emerges, ending in a mouthpiece. Pipes can range from very simple machine-made briar models to highly prized hand-made artisanal implements made by renowned pipemakers, which are often very expensive collector's items. Pipe smoking is the oldest known traditional form of tobacco smoking.

History

Some cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Americas smoke tobacco in ceremonial pipes, and have done so since long before the arrival of Europeans. For instance the Lakota people use a ceremonial pipe called čhaŋnúŋpa. Other cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Americas smoke tobacco socially. The tobacco plant is native to South America but spread into North America long before Europeans arrived. Tobacco was introduced to Europe from the Americas in the 16th century and spread around the world rapidly.

As tobacco was not introduced to the Old World until the 16th century, the older pipes outside of the Americas were usually used to smoke various other substances, including hashish, a rare and expensive substance outside areas of the Middle East, Central Asia and India, where it was then produced.

Workings of a tobacco pipe

Principle

A pipe's fundamental function is to provide a relatively safe, manipulable volume in which to incompletely combust a smokable substance. Typically this is accomplished by connecting a refractory 'bowl' to some sort of 'stem' which extends and may also cool the smoke mixture drawn through the combusting organic mass (see below).

Parts

The broad anatomy of a pipe typically comprises mainly the bowl and the stem. The ''bowl'' (1) which is the cup-like outer shell, the part hand-held while packing, holding and smoking a pipe, is also the part "knocked" top-down to loosen and release impacted spent tobacco. On being sucked, the general stem delivers the smoke from the bowl to the user's mouth.

Inside the bowl is an inner ''chamber'' (2) space holding tobacco pressed into it. This ''draught hole'' (3), is for air flow where air has travelled through the tobacco in the chamber, taking the smoke with it, up the ''shank'' (4). At the end of the shank, the pipe's ''mortise'' (5) and ''tenon'' (6) join is an air-tight, simple connection of two detachable parts where the mortise is a hole met by the tenon, a tight-fitting "tongue" at the start of the ''stem'' (7). Known as the ''bore'' (10), the inner shaft of this second section stays uniform throughout while the outer stem tapers down to the mouthpiece or ''bit'' (8) held in the smoker's teeth, and finally ends in the "lip" (9), attenuated for comfort.

Materials

The bowls of tobacco pipes are commonly made of briar wood, meerschaum, corncob, pear-wood, rose-wood or clay. Less common materials include other dense-grained woods such as cherry, olive, maple, mesquite, oak, and bog-wood. Minerals such as catlinite and soapstone have also been used. Pipe bowls are sometimes decorated by carving, and moulded clay pipes often had simple decoration in the mould.

Unusual pipe materials include gourds (as in the famous calabash pipe) and pyrolytic graphite. Metal and glass, seldom used for tobacco pipes, are common for pipes intended for other substances, such as cannabis.


The stem needs a long channel of constant position and diameter running through it for a proper draw, although filter pipes have varying diameters and can be successfully smoked even without filters or adapters. Because it is molded rather than carved, clay may make up the entire pipe or just the bowl; pipes made of most other materials have stems constructed separately and detachable. Stems and bits of tobacco pipes are usually made of moldable materials like Ebonite, Lucite, Bakelite, or soft plastic. Less common are stems made of reeds, bamboo, or hollowed-out pieces of wood. Expensive pipes once had stems made of amber, though this is rare now.

Types

Pipe shapes

* Apple. Subtypes: Apple, Author, Diplomat, Egg, Hawkbill, Prince, Tomatoe (Ball).
* Billiard. Subtypes: Billiard, Brandy, Chimney, Panel, Oom Paul, Pot, Nose Warmer.
* Bulldog. Subtypes: Bulldog, Bull Moose, Bullcap, Rhodesian, Ukulele.
* Calabash. Subtypes: Calabash, Reverse Calabash.
* Canadian. Subtypes: Canadian, Liverpool, Lovat, Lumberman.
* Cavalier. Subtypes: Cavalier, Pseudo-cavalier.
* Churchwarden (Reading pipe). – Pipe with a long stem.
* Dublin. Subtypes: Dublin, Acorn (Pear), Cutty, Devil Anse, Zulu.
* Freehand. Subtypes: Freehand, Blowfish, Horn, Nautilus, Tomahawk, Volcano.
* Sitter. Subtypes: Sitter, Cherrywood, Duke (Don), (Stand Up) Poker, Tankard.
* Tyrolean pipe.
* Vest Pocket.

File:Smoking pipe billard.jpg, Billiard
File:Smoking pipe bent.jpg, Bent (Billiard)
File:Smoking pipe sitter.jpg, Sitter
File:Smoking pipe pot.jpg, Pot
File:Smoking pipe prince.jpg, Prince
File:Smoking pipe churchwarden.jpg, Churchwarden
File:Smoking pipe tyrolean.jpg, Tyrolean
File:Smoking pipe cavalier.jpg, Cavalier
File:Smoking pipe vest pocket.jpg, Vest Pocket
File:Smoking pipe macarthur.jpg, MacArthur

Calabash

Calabash gourds (usually with meerschaum or porcelain bowls set inside them) have long made prized pipes, but they are labour-intensive and, today, quite expensive. Because of this expense, pipes with bodies made of wood (usually mahogany) instead of gourd, but with the same classic shape, are sold as calabashes. Both wood and gourd pipes are functionally the same (with the important exception that the dried gourd, usually being noticeably lighter, sits more comfortably in the mouth). They consist of a downward curve that ends with an upcurve where the bowl sits. Beneath the bowl is an air chamber which serves to cool, dry, and mellow the smoke. There are also briar pipes being sold as calabashes. These typically do not have an air chamber and are so named only because of their external shape.

A calabash pipe is rather large and easy to recognize as a pipe when used on a stage in dramatic productions. Although a British newspaper cartoon of the early 1900s depicts the British actor H. A. Saintsbury as the Great Detective smoking what may be a calabash pipe, its now-stereotypical identification with Sherlock Holmes remains a mystery.

Some commentators have erroneously associated the calabash with William Gillette, the first actor to become universally recognized as the embodiment of the detective. Gillette actually introduced the curving or bent pipe for use by Holmes, but his pipe was an ornate briar. Gillette chose a bent pipe, more easily clenched in the teeth when delivering lines.

While there are promotional stills of Basil Rathbone smoking calabash pipes as Holmes for other projects, most notably his radio show, in his first two outings as Holmes produced by 20th Century-Fox as taking place in the Victorian era, Rathbone smoked an apple-bowled, black briar with a half bend, made by Dunhill, the company known for making the best pipes at that time. In the next dozen films, the series produced by Universal Studios, with Holmes and Watson updated to the 1940s, Rathbone smokes a much less expensive Peterson half bend with a billiard-shaped bowl. A calabash is introduced in '' The Spider Woman'' but Holmes does not smoke it.

In the original chronicles, such as " The Adventure of the Copper Beeches", Sherlock Holmes is described as smoking a long-stemmed cherrywood, which he favored "when in a disputatious, rather than a meditative mood." Holmes smokes an old briar-root pipe on occasion, for example in '' The Sign of the Four'', and an "unsavory" and "disreputable" black and oily clay pipe in several stories, notably in "The Red-Headed League". Dr Watson declares it to be the detective's preferred pipe: "It was to him as a counsellor" (''A Case of Identity''), the "companion of his deepest meditations" ('' The Valley of Fear'')..

Pipes with removable bowl

File:Smoking pipe falcon 1.jpg, Falcon pipe.
File:Smoking pipe falcon 2.jpg, Falcon pipe with bowl detached.
File:Falcon-pipe.jpg, Falcon pipe.

Bowls are made of varying shapes and materials to allow the smoker to try different characteristics or to dedicate particular bowls for particular tobaccos. Bowls are not interchangeable between manufacturers.

Hookahs

A ''hookah'', ''ghelyan'', or ''narghile'', is a Middle Eastern water pipe that cools the smoke by filtering it through a water chamber. Often ice, cough-drops, milk, or fruit juice is added to the water. Traditionally, the tobacco is mixed with a sweetener, such as honey or molasses. Fruit flavors have also become popular. Modern hookah smokers, especially in the US, smoke "me'assel", "moassel", "molasses" or "shisha", all names for the same wet mixture of tobacco, molasses/honey, glycerine, and often, flavoring. This style of tobacco is smoked in a bowl with foil or a screen (metal or glass) on top of the bowl. More traditional tobaccos are "tombiek" (a dry unflavored tobacco, which the user moistens in water, squeezes out the extra liquid, and places coals directly on top) or "jarak" (more of a paste of tobacco with fruit to flavor the smoke).

Bowl materials

North American natives along the East coast traditionally made their tobacco pipes from clay or from a type of pot-stone (''lapis ollaris''), or else serpentine stone. In the Upper Midwest they made use of the red pipestone or catlinite for the same, a fine-grained easily worked stone of a rich red color of the Coteau des Prairies. Today, other construction materials used for the bowl may include any of the following:

* Briar – root of ''Erica arborea'', prevalent material.
* Meerschaum – mineral sepiolite called "sea foam".
* Gourd
* Porcelain
* Synthetics
* Ebony ("Zappi")
* Cherry wood
* Beechwood
* Corn cob
* Metal – used by Japanese kiseru and Arabian midwakh.

File:Smoking pipe billard 2.jpg, Briar
File:Smoking pipe meerschaum.jpg, Meerschaum
File:Smoking pipe clay.jpg, Clay
File:Cherry wood smoking pipe.jpg, Cherry wood
File:Smoking pipe beechwood.jpg, Beechwood
File:Smoking pipe corn cobl.jpg, Corn cob
File:Smoking pipe tyrolean 2.jpg, Porcelain

Briar

The majority of pipes sold today, whether handmade or machine-made, are fashioned from briar (french: bruyère). Briar is a particularly well suited wood for pipe making for a number of reasons. The first and most important characteristic is its natural resistance to fire. The second is its inherent ability to absorb moisture. The burl absorbs water in nature to supply the tree in the dry times and likewise will absorb the moisture that is a byproduct of combustion. Briar is cut from the root burl of the tree heath (''Erica arborea''), which is native to the rocky and sandy soils of the Mediterranean region. Briar burls are cut into two types of blocks; ebauchon and plateaux. Ebauchon is taken from the heart of the burl while plateaux is taken from the outer part of the burl. While both types of blocks can produce pipes of the highest quality, most artisan pipemakers prefer to use plateaux because of their superior graining.

Clay

Ceramic pipes, made of moulded and then fired clay, were used almost universally by Europeans between the introduction of tobacco in the 16th century, and the introduction of cheap cigarettes at the end of the nineteenth.

The material is not very strong and the early varieties had long thin stems, so they frequently broke, but were cheap to replace. It has been claimed that this fragility was somewhat intentional as it was utilized by Colonial American tavern keepers, for example, in renting the clay pipes to patrons. When the patron was done smoking the pipe and returned it to the keeper, the end of the stem was simply broken off so as to be ready for the next patron. However, there is no documentary evidence for this practice; it is known that communal pipes used in taverns were cleansed by being heated in an oven on special iron racks.

Forming the pipe involved making them in moulds with the bore created by pushing an oiled wire inside the stem. The preferred material was pipeclay or "tobacco pipe clay", which fires to a white colour and is found in only certain locations. In North America, many clay pipes were historically made from more typical terracotta-coloured clays. According to one British writer in 1869, the French preferred old pipes and the English new, the middle class preferred long stems and the working class preferred short. Short stemmed pipes, sometimes called ''cuttys'' or ''nose warmers'' in England, were preferred by manual laborers as they could be gripped between the teeth, leaving both of the smoker's hands free.

Later low-quality clay pipes were made by slip casting in a mould. Higher quality pipes are made in a labour-intensive hand shaping process. Traditionally, clay pipes are unglazed. Clays burn "hot" in comparison to other types of pipes, so they are often difficult for most pipe-smokers to use. Their proponents claim that, unlike other materials, a well-made clay pipe gives a "pure" smoke with no flavour addition from the pipe bowl. In addition to aficionados, reproductions of historical clay styles are used by some historical re-enactors. Clay pipes were once very popular in Ireland, where they were called
''dudeens''.

Broken fragments of clay pipe can be useful as dating evidence for archaeologists. In the 1950s, the American archaeologist J. C. Harrington noted that the bore of pipe stems decreased over time, so a late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries pipe would have a stem bore diameter of around , but a late eighteenth century pipe would have a bore diameter of around . The size of bowls also increased over time as tobacco became a cheaper commodity, and later pipes tend to be more decorated.

Corncob

The uniquely American pipes made from corncobs are cheap and effective, although regarded by some as inelegant. After being dried for two years, the cobs are hollowed out to form a bowl shape, then either dipped in a plaster-based mixture or varnished or lacquered on the outside. Shanks made from birch wood are then inserted into the bowls.

The world's oldest and largest manufacturer of corncob pipes is Missouri Meerschaum, located in Washington, Missouri, where the company has produced the pipes since 1869. General Douglas MacArthur and Mark Twain were perhaps the most famous historical smokers of corncob pipes, as well as fictional cartoon characters Popeye

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