Ben Rapaport

Ben Rapaport, courtesy PipesMagazine.com

For the past 50 years, Ben Rapaport has been known internationally as an avid pipe smoker, antique pipe collector, and tobacco bibliophile. He was inducted into the International Academy of the Pipe in 1985, into the Confrérie des maîtres-pipiers de Saint-Claude, France, in 1989, and was the recipient of the prestigious “Doctor of Pipes” achievement award from the Chicagoland Pipe Collectors Club in 2004.

Book Announcement

Ben has completed his 9th book!

An Intimate History of The Tobacco Industry, 1850–1920. From The Briar Pipe of Saint-Claude to The Cigarette in The Trenches of World War One.

Ben is the only one selling it. For U.S. residents, the price is $32.50 including USPS Media mail postage. assuming that you do not need/desire USPS insurance; tracking accompanies. For 2 copies: $60.00 postpaid. Faster shipping service can be arranged. To buyers in Canada and in Europe, he will need to take the prepared package to the post office to determine shipping cost. After he ships, he will then advise on the total cost.

you can contact him via E-mail at

ben70gray@gmail.com

He is the author of

• A Tobacco Source Book (1972)
• A Complete Guide to Collecting Antique Pipes (1979, 1998)
• The Global Guide to Tobacco Literature (1989)
• Museum of Tobacco History and Art Guide Book (1996)
• Collecting Antique Meerschaums: Miniature to Majestic Sculpture, 1850-1925 (1999)
• The European Porcelain Tobacco Pipe (2014)
• Tobacco and Smoking Among The Blue and Gray (2014), available through the author, and Briar Books Press

• 

  A complete Guide to Collection Antique Pipes

• 

  Collecting Antique Meerschaum Pipes

• 

  The European Porcelain Tobacco Pipe, courtesy Amazon.com

His sixth book, The Arts of an Addiction: Qing Dynasty Opium Pipes and Accessories (2005) was his first writing venture on a non-tobacco topic.

He is a popular lecturer at pipe clubs, his articles on pipe and tobacco history appeared regularly in Pipes & Tobaccos magazine until Spring 2019, when is ceased publication, and his articles occasionally appeared in CIGAR magazine until Spring 2011 when it ceased to be published. Achievements and affiliations include: member, Pipe Smoker’s Hall of Fame (1973); Consultant, Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society, University of Alabama (2001). As a certified personal property appraiser, Ben has conducted formal valuations of pipe collections for several museums and for private collectors.

Ben Rapaport has over 3000 tobacco related volumes in his personal collection, and has created what is likely the most comprehensive list of tobacco related books and publications in English. It is organized by topic, although many entries cover a range of tobacco related topics. He started this list in 1987, and has been updating it as new works come to his attention. The current list is from the Fall of 2022, available here in PDF format:
A Bibliography for the Pipe Smoker and Pipe Collector (Ben Rapaport, Fall 2022, Rev. 5).

The following articles are available here on pipedia.org:

• New! How Did the Pipe Get Its Name? An Etymological Investigation, November 2022
• New! Hydrostone and Resin Pipes. A Personal History, October 2022
• New! The Globalization of Tobacco Pipe Literature, October 2022
• Better than Briar? What History Tells!, August 2022
• The CPCC Doctor and Master of Pipes Awards: They’re Not Forever Programs, August 2022
• Romancing the Stone: Memorable Musings About Meerschaum, June 2022
• A Pipe Parable in Chapter and Verse, June 2022
• The Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851: The First Pipe Show!, May 2022
• L’Abbondanza! Today’s Bustling Briar Biz (Briar Market Today), May 2022
• Satirical Sketches of Pipe Smokers, April 2022
• The Wizards of Oddities, Yesterday and Today, April 2022
• Pipe Gifts to Our Presidents, March 2022
• A Conversation Piece: "The Most Expensive Pipe", October 2021
• Meerschaum: Lost in Translation: The Linguistic Hodgepodge of Mg4Si6O15(OH)2·6H2O
• Extraordinary Ephemera: Catalogs as a glimpse into a bygone smoking era
• Reflections on the Trade: Random Pipe and Tobacco Facts and Factoids of Yesterday
• Pipemaking 101. A Bilingual Syllabus
• Pipe Bombs: good intentions, bad designs! (Spring 2019)
• My Manifesto: A Plea for Plain Talk
• Collectible Pipe-related Ephemera: Here Today, Not Necessarily Gone Tomorrow!.
• The Tobacco Pipe—Opium Pipe Nexus: Where there’s smoke, there are accessories!
• The Antique Tobacco Pipe, Invention-Function-Art (Originally Published in the Journal of Antiques and Collectibles, February 2019)
• A Few Good Men, an article for Pipes and Tobacco Magazine (November, 2003), available by permission. Bragge is a major focus. A related article appears in Pipes & Tobaccos magazine, Vol. 20, No. 1, Spring 2015 "Writers’ Blocks. A survey of pipe and tobacco literature through time."
• An Historical Review of Reviews: Chronicling A Century of Magazines for the PipeSmoking Maven: Chronicling A Century of Magazines for the Pipe-Smoking Maven, by Ben Rapaport
• Museums With Interest In Tobacco, Compiled by Ben Rapaport (Winter 2018-2019)
• Remembering Richard Dunhill, Originally Published in Pipes & Tobaccos magazine 2016. This version is unedited.
• In Pipestone. A puzzling pipe of improvisational ingenuity
• The Odyssey of the Oom Paul: A Hungarian ... Really?. Note: We are also working on this in wiki formatting, but it currently lacks the footnotes The Odyssey of the Oom Paul: A Hungarian ... Really?.

We are currently working on bringing these to Pipedia from the Wayback Machine's archived version of P&T Magazine's website, which is sadly now defunct:

• To Patent or Not to Patent?
• The Great Divide: You Are What You Collect
• Where’s The Real Pipe Action? I Say It’s At The Auction Block!
• Perceptions of Pipe Smokers: Hypothesis or Hyperbole?
• The Write Stuff

This is just a small sampling of Ben's many publications. His complete bibliography is available here: Publications of Ben Rapaport. We hope to add many more of Ben's articles here on Pipedia as time allows.

Off site links

• You might enjoy listening to Brian Levine's interview with Ben on the Pipes Magazine Radio Show
• TobaccoPipeArtistory on Blogspot.com
• The Tobacco Pipe Artistory on FaceBook

Contact Information

Ben Rapaport can be reached by E-mail at mailto:ben70gray@gmail.com.