This article is about pipes used for smoking tobacco. For apple wood for smoking about the practice of pipe smoking, see Pipe smoking. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. This article possibly contains original research.
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This article’s lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. This color painting by Frank Wiles first appeared in the September, 1914 number of Strand Magazine to illustrate the first installment of “The Valley of Fear”. A tobacco pipe, often called simply a pipe, is a device specifically made to smoke tobacco.
You can help by adding to it. 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. This section does not cite any sources. A pipe’s fundamental function is to provide a relatively safe, manipulable volume in which to incompletely combust a smokable substance. The broad anatomy of a pipe typically comprises mainly the bowl and the stem. On being sucked, the general stem delivers the smoke from the bowl to the user’s mouth. The bowls of tobacco pipes are commonly made of briar wood, meerschaum, corncob, pear-wood, rose-wood or clay.
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. This section needs additional citations for verification. Subtypes: Billiard, Brandy, Chimney, Panel, Oom Paul, Pot, Nose Warmer. Subtypes: Bulldog, Bull Moose, Bullcap, Rhodesian, Ukulele. Subtypes: Freehand, Blowfish, Horn, Nautilus, Tomahawk, Volcano. This particular example was made in the US by the Pioneer pipe company. First appearing in the late 1960s, these were sold as a cheaper alternative to European-made calabashes.
The Vulcanite joiner and fussy bit are distinctive signs of the company’s manufacture. 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. 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. 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. 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. A hookah, ghelyan, or narghile, is a Middle Eastern water pipe that cools the smoke by filtering it through a water chamber. Often ice, cough-drops, milk, or fruit juice is added to the water. Traditionally, the tobacco is mixed with a sweetener, such as honey or molasses. Fruit flavors have also become popular. 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. 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. 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. 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.