Calabash, Calabash, Wherefore Art Thou Calabash?: Difference between revisions

My musings on the definition of the calabash shape started at the 2000 Chicagoland International Pipe and Tobacciana Show. I had displayed my collection and was enjoying talking about the shape with the many attendees who passed by my table. A gentleman was examining one of my Castello #49s and asked, "Why do you consider this a calabash?" The question caught me completely off guard. Of course, the 49 is Castello's calabash shape, and it had never really occurred to me to think of it otherwise. Yet when you look over the variety of pipes in my collection, a Castello #49 is certainly different than a Ser Jacopo Picta #3 calabash. So what defines a calabash shape?