Tobacco pipe


A tobacco pipe, often called simply a pipe, is a device specifically made to smoke tobacco. It comprises a chamber for the tobacco from which a thin hollow stem 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.

Statistics

In 2024, survey data analysis in England reported a rise in exclusive use of non-cigarette combustible tobacco, estimating an increase from about 151,200 users in 2013 to about 772,800 by September 2023.
In the U.S. National Health Interview Survey reporting, pipe use is commonly grouped with water-pipe/hookah use. The 2021 NHIS analysis estimated 0.9% of U.S. adults were current users of 'pipe'.
The 2024 US National Youth Tobacco Survey estimated current pipe tobacco use at 0.5% among middle and high school students.
CDC analysis of U.S. NHIS data reported that among adults aged 18–24 years, exclusive pipe smoking declined from 1.0% in 2017 to 0.1% in 2023.

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. Residue analyses from ca. 500 BCE burials at Jirzankal Cemetery indicate cannabis was burned in wooden braziers and inhaled during mortuary rituals.

Health

Epidemiological research has found that pipe smoking is associated with increased risks of tobacco-related 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 never-smokers.

Principle

Operating 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.

Parts

The broad anatomy of a pipe typically comprises mainly the bowl and the stem. The bowl 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 space holding tobacco pressed into it. This draught hole, is for air flow where air has travelled through the tobacco in the chamber, taking the smoke with it, up the shank. At the end of the shank, the pipe's mortise and tenon joint 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. Known as the bore, the inner shaft of this second section stays uniform throughout while the outer stem tapers down to the mouthpiece or bit held in the smoker's teeth, and finally ends in the "lip", 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 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.
  • 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. – Pipe with a long stem.
  • Dublin. Subtypes: Dublin, Acorn, Cutty, Devil Anse, Zulu.
  • Freehand. Subtypes: Freehand, Blowfish, Horn, Nautilus, Tomahawk, Volcano.
  • Sitter. Subtypes: Sitter, Cherrywood, Duke, Poker, Tankard.
  • Tyrolean pipe.
  • Vest Pocket.

    Calabash

s have long made prized pipes, but they are labour-intensive and, today, quite expensive. Because of this expense, pipes with bodies made of wood instead of gourd, but with the same classic shape, are sold as calabashes. Both wood and gourd pipes are functionally the same. 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", the "companion of his deepest meditations"..
Holmes' association with the pipe was referenced in the 2009 film Inglorious Basterds, in which antagonist Hans Landa smokes a Calabash Meerschaum pipe in his introductory scene.

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 on top of the bowl. More traditional tobaccos are "tombiek" or "jarak".

Bowl materials

North American natives along the East coast traditionally made their tobacco pipes from clay or from a type of pot-stone, 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
  • Cherry wood
  • Beechwood
  • Corn cob
  • Metal – used by Japanese kiseru and Arabian midwakh.