A tobacco pipe, often called simply a pipe, is a device specifically made to smoke tobacco. It comprises, primarily of a combustion chamber (the bowl) for the tobacco, and a (generally) tapering hollow stem, ending in a mouthpiece to draw air into the bowl and thus smoke to the mouth. Pipes can range from very simple and inexpensive models, to highly prized hand-made artisan pieces by renowned pipe makers around the world. Tobacco pipes are often very expensive and sought after collector's items, both by smokers and non-smoker's alike, due to the plethora of styles, history, materials and artistic interpretation bound up in a practical object.
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.
Health Epidemiological research has found that tobacco pipe smoking is associated with increased risks of cancers and other diseases. A large U.S. cohort study reported that exclusive pipe smokers had a higher risk of death from a tobacco-linked cancer than non-smokers.
Principle
Parts
The broad anatomy of a tobacco pipe typically comprises mainly the Bowl and the Stem. The Bowl (1) is the part most often held while packing and smoking the pipe On being sucked, the Stem (7) delivers the smoke from the bowl to the user's mouth. Inside the bowl is a space (2) for holding the tobacco, pressed into it. The Draft Hole (3) is the beginning of the Bore (10) which facilitates the air-flow through the pipe. The Shank (4) is often one piece with the bowl, and houses the mortise (5) at its end. The Tenon (6) fitting into the mortise, forms an air-tight, simple connection of the two parts. The Bore stays uniform throughout the Stem, while the outside tapers down to the Mouthpiece or Bit (8), which commonly ends with a lip (9) to facilitate holding with the teeth.
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.
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.
Although the calabash is stereotypically associated with Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle only described the detective smoking clay, cherrywood or briar pipes, often during deductive meditations. All of these may be curved or straight, but Doyle's illustrator Sidney Paget only drew him smoking straight pipes. Actor William Gillette used a curved briar when portraying Holmes; the curved stem allowed him to hold the pipe without covering his mouth as he spoke. A 1931 botanical paper attests the association of the heavier calabash with Holmes and by the 1940s the stereotype was well established, sometimes played for comic effect as in Abbott and Costello's Who Done It? (1942).
Pipes with removable bowl
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 or artificial flavorings are 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.
Briar
The majority of pipes sold today, whether handmade or machine-made, are fashioned from briar. 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. Contrary to popular belief, the stems were not broken off for the next patron when shared in taverns, as the understanding of germs at the time would not have prompted this behavior.
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. It is known that communal pipes used in taverns were cleansed by being heated in an oven on special iron racks.
In England, clay pipes were sold in bundles of dozens or twenties, and were often free in taverns, where the tobacco was sold. They were made out of a ball clay. The manufacture of clay pipes was controlled by the Guild of Tobacco Pipemakers of Westminster, which was first incorporated in 1619 and later became a City of London Livery Company, reformed in 1954 as the Worshipful Company of Tobacco Pipe Makers and Tobacco Blenders.
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."The Bane without its Antidote", The Nautical Magazine and Naval Chronicle for 1869, reprint Cambridge University Press, 2013, , 9781108054874, google books 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, known as clay pipe dating. English specialists can date a pipe to around a 20-year period. 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