Pipe Articles

Ben Rapaport

• New: Pipe Collecting: Avocation or Vocation?, March 2024
• A Salmagundi of Briar Pipe Shapes and Names, November 2023
• The General and the Captain: Two Period Pipes of the Early Twentieth Century, September 2023
• A Magical Mystery Tour: Meerschaum, the Queen (or King) of Tobacco Pipes, September 2023
• The Briar Trade: Makers, Manufacturers, and Brands That Time Forgot, Originally appeared in Pipes & Tobaccos Magazine, Vol. 18, No. 2, Summer 2013
• A Demuth—Dunhill Connection?, July 2023
• The Pipe Club. A History and Then Some, June 2023
• 1-2-3 Sold! Recent Pipe-Auction Action, June 2023
• Ye Olde Tobacco Box, Jar and Tin. Bygone Pipe Smoker's Accouterments, June 2023
• The Native-American Peace Pipe (or Pipe of Peace). Two Terms Often Used as Symbol, Idiom, and Metaphor, May 2023
• New Life for Old Tomes: Pipe and Tobacco Book Reprints, March 2023. Includes an extensive list of reprints and Ben's thought provoking essay on the quality and availability pipe related information on various platforms, including the internet, eBooks, and in print.
• Tobacciana Exposed: Carnal Collectibles, March 2023. Some may find this article disturbing or offensive. Reader discretion is advised.
• Pipe and tobacco experts: Are there any?, February 2023
• Eye Candy for the Tobacco Pipe Connoisseur. 19th–century meerschaum pipes in word-pictures, January 2023
• How Did the Pipe Get Its Name? An Etymological Investigation, November 2022
• Hydrostone and Resin Pipes. A Personal History, October 2022
• 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
• Lost in Translation: The Linguistic Hodgepodge of Mg4Si6O15(OH)2·6H2O, August 2012
• Extraordinary Ephemera: Catalogs as a glimpse into a bygone smoking era, Winter 2016
• Reflections on the Trade: Random Pipe and Tobacco Facts and Factoids of Yesterday
• 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?
• PDF Pipemaking 101. A Bilingual Syllabus
• PDF Pipe Bombs: good intentions, bad designs! (Spring 2019)
• PDF My Manifesto: A Plea for Plain Talk
• PDF Collectible Pipe-related Ephemera: Here Today, Not Necessarily Gone Tomorrow!.
• PDF The Tobacco Pipe—Opium Pipe Nexus: Where there’s smoke, there are accessories!
• PDF The Antique Tobacco Pipe, Invention-Function-Art (Originally Published in the Journal of Antiques and Collectibles, February 2019)
• PDF 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."
• PDF 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
• PDF Museums With Interest In Tobacco, Compiled by Ben Rapaport (Winter 2018-2019)

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

Jim Lilley

• A closer look at the famous Peterson Standard System Pipe by Jim Lilley
• A Closer Look at The Peterson Deluxe System Pipe by Jim Lilley
• A Closer look at the Peterson House Pipes by Jim Lilley
• A Closer Look at the new Darwin Series by Jim Lilley
• A Closer Look at the Mark Twain Original and New Pipes by Jim Lilley
• A closer look at the Peterson Sherlock Holmes series of pipes by Jim Lilley
• Churchwarden Pipes by Jim Lilley

John C. Loring

• Dunhill Retail Price List
• UPDATE PAGE - Errata and New Information - The Dunhill Briar Pipe, The Patent Years and After.
• A DUNHILL ERRATA SHEET FOR R. C. HACKER'S "RARE SMOKE"
• THE DUNHILL WHITE SPOT GUARANTEE - Dunhill's guarantee is generally credited as the impetus for implementing the date codes, as well as establishing its reputation. Dunhill expert, John C. Loring has written an excellent article on its establishment and refinement.
• Musing On Bits: "Dunhill’s ‘push’ bit while not invented by Dunhill may well have been an important reason for its early success."
• The Earliest Dunhill?
• THE POST WWII “ODA/800” SERIES
• Dunhill Carved Heads
• DATING ENGLISH TINNED TOBACCO
• A DUNHILL ODA SHAPE CHART
• A DUNHILL DATING CORRECTION
• DUNHILL PIPE TOBACCO: 1907 – 1990
• A Hypothetical WWII Pipe
• In Search of the First Shell
• Grading the Pre World War II Dunhill Bruyere DR
• Some 1979 Dunhill: About the unfortunate episode of the 1979 "Sale" Pipes.
• The Early Dunhill OD
• Two Early Dunhills
• The 1980s Fake Dunhill
• Dunhill's Blends
• On Dunhill Tinned Tobacco
• The Dunhill 482 Billiard
• Dunhill Large Billiard Variations
• Deciphering an ODB 831
• The Extra Long Shank Dunill Canadian
• An eBay ES
• A Duke Street 'DR'
• The Poor Man's Dunhill Mini-Magnum -- The 1976 Jumbo by John C. Loring with Richard Esserman
• The Atypical LC (in PDF), French Translation by Jean-Christophe Bienfait
• Dunhill Blends Appearing in its Catalogs from 1910 - 1990 (in PDF)
• The Pre-'25 Dunhill Pipe (in PDF, written 09/1997), French Translation by Jean-Christophe Bienfait

Jonathan Guss

• How Many Angels? Another Look At The Barling Transition, by Jonathan Guss

Bill Burney

• The Long Shanks by Bill Burney

Tim Fuller

• Pipes in Other Woods by Tim Fuller

Rex Poggenpohl

• Barney Suzuki; international pipe: smoker, collector, organization leader and author.
• Remembering Frank Burla, Broken Pipe; 1944-2021

David Gerstel

• A Gathering of Pipes and Men
• The Man Who Carved Clay
• The Room

R.D. Field

• What Makes A Good Briar Pipe: Part 1

• What Makes A Good Briar Pipe: Part 2

• Grain

• Curing

• The Art Of The Sandblast

• Hand Made? Machine Made? Hand Made By Machine?