G. L. Pease As I sit down with this month’s questions, I’m enjoying a wonderful bowl in little sandblasted apple made by one of my favorite makers. While this normally shouldn’t be worthy of mention, really, in this case it is. When I got this pipe in trade from another collector, it hadn’t been smoked …

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G. L. Pease Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that pipe smokers were around even before the interwebs, and our modern technology-driven ability to communicate with one another effortlessly. There was a time when we congregated in tobacconists’ shops, pubs, bars, and other public venues, but so much of that is gone, now, and our numbers …

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G. L. Pease Amongst pipe tobacco aficionados, there seems to be no end to tightly held beliefs, some of which may have at one time had a basis in reality, some of which seem to be just frivolous flights of fancy. We are participants in a pastime rich with both history and romance, and the …

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G. L. Pease Some really interesting questions fell out of the mailbag this month, with topics ranging from humidification, to tobacco colors, to blending, to toxicity. For a change, though, it’s not the toxicity of tobacco that’s in question, but rather that of flavoring agents, and of different woods when used in pipe making. Some …

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G. L. Pease It seems this month’s mail was dominated by questions and comments about aging. I’m glad we’re talking about tobaccos, here, and not me, because I simply refuse to comply with the universe’s insistence that I grow older, dammit. Call me Peter Pan. (What’s that confounded ticking, and who let a crocodile in …

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