Corn Cob Pipes – Almost 150 Years Old and 3,000 Produced per Day
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Kevin Godbee - Feb 27, 2011
- 1 min read
Corn Cob Pipes have many, many fans, probably way more than anyone knows. Of course, there are also those that treat the lowly corn cob pipe as if they were the Rodney Dangerfield of pipes … they get no respect. However, the history of corn cob pipes dates back to 1869 and over 3,000 are produced on a daily basis. Back in September 2009, we published the story of the Missouri Meerschaum company, the sole producer of the original corn cob pipe [Corn Cob Pipes, The Making Of at Missouri Meerschaum], which included photos showing the step-by-step process of how they are produced. Now, we have been granted the exclusive rights to re-publish a fascinating video originally produced by Aaron Mermelstein and published on HEC TV.
What many people do not know is that a special hybrid breed of corn is grown solely for the purpose of making corn cob pipes. This is why the recent cheap Chinese-made knock-offs do not work, and burn through the bottom after the first smoke. Missouri Meerschaum is also a vertically-integrated company. They own the farms and grow all of their own special hybrid corn to make their pipes. Of interesting note, when you watch the video, the narrator speaks of them having a 3-year supply of corn cobs. However, when I spoke to Phil Morgan, the owner of Missouri Meerschaum last week at the “St. Louis Pipe Show” (officially the “Gateway Area Pipe Show and Swap”), he told me that they are just barely able to keep up with their orders.
Thanks to HEC TV for granting permission to re-publish their video. Fill up your Missouri Meerschaum Corn Cob Pipe, light ‘er up, and then press play on the video below.
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This video was originally published on HEC TV on February 18, 2011
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Related Article: Corn Cob Pipes, The Making Of at Missouri Meerschaum
Here’s a photo shoot of Chelsea Smoking a Corn Cob Pipe
You can buy the pipe Chelsea is smoking here
Written by Kevin Godbee
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 636. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Barry Kane. Barry started smoking a pipe in 1961 when he was 14-years old. Back then it seemed like everybody smoked, and you could buy pipes and tobacco just about anywhere. Barry is a true old-school pipe smoker, sticking to just one blend. See if you can guess which one before listening. At the top of the show Brian will give his take on Scandinavian Tobacco Group’s purchase of Mac Baren and Sutliff Tobacco and their announcement that they will be shut down.
There’s a pipe in my collection that I cannot bring myself to smoke, though I’ve had it for more years than I care to recall. It’s old, or shall I say, well experienced; that experience, that oldness came to it long before it was in my possession. The pipe is an old Comoy’s Grand Slam from the 1940s. The shape (#93), a slightly canted, stack billiard (sometimes referred to as a Belgian) is right up my alley, and it’s a beautiful example of it. It came to me with some wear and tear; nothing unusual for an old pipe, but more the signs of one that has been well loved, smoked a lot, treated as a favorite tool, cherished, in a sense, by frequent use. It’s the pipe equivalent of a vintage car that’s been driven a lot, enjoyed fully and maintained adequately, rather than one kept in a spotless garage, dusted and detailed weekly, brought out only for leisurely Sunday drives, or to be ogled behind the ropes at the next Concours d’Elegance. When it arrived, those uncounted years ago, it wanted a little restoration. Nothing dramatic needed to be done to it, but the stem was oxidized, the finish a little dingy. The cake was even and fairly thin, and the airway was relatively clean, both signs that its previous owner cared for it, but the bowl’s surface was a little drab and dull. It took little effort to reveal its beauty, to show the lovely contrasted stain and interesting grain beneath the old wax. I often think I should do before and after photos of pipes that I work on, but those thoughts always come after the work’s been done. This one would have been a great illustration of how years of handling that can sometimes make a pipe more beautiful, can other times make it just look grungy. Once I’d cleaned up the externals, it was time to address the inside bits. I approach this a little bassackwards, I realize. It would be more sensible to take care of the inside before addressing the outside, but it’s how I roll. If an old pipe isn’t pretty to look at, it’s unlikely that I’ll care much about it, and cleaning is usually the hardest part, or at least the most boring part of any restoration for me. Alcohol and pipe cleaners. Lots of pipe cleaners. That’s why I leave it for last. Sometimes, I’ll even give a pipe a test smoke before a deep cleaning, just for a point of reference. I gave it a sniff to get an idea of what I was up against, and it stopped me cold. There in that bowl was an aroma that I had not smelled in decades. My head was instantly filled with memories of being in the back room of a fabled Berkeley tobacconist’s shop where I stumbled upon a few jars of long discontinued blends. One of them, a blend called Forty and Eight, had the most engaging and unusual scent of any tobacco I’d stuck my schnoz into. It was sweet, but not in a candy store way. There were none of the usual vanilla, cherry, berry or anise notes of typical aromatics, nothing that could be compared to aftershave or deodorant soap, but something almost musky, a little earthy, something exotic. The shop’s owner couldn’t tell me what was in it, how, or where it had been produced. The old blend had been retired before he’d bought the place. The printed catalogue gave no clues, either, other than being overprinted with the word “DISCONTINUED” in bold, rubber-stamp type. (And, I don’t recall it as being “highly aromatic” as the description indicates.) There was still quite a bit in the jar. Being, at that point, an intrepid explorer of all kinds of tobaccos, whether I thought I’d like them or not, I had to give it a try. It was burly based, but also comprised a good measure of virginia leaf, and maybe some other varieties; I didn’t have enough experience at the time to really pick it apart. But, that aroma was unlike anything I’d experienced before or since. It was something now completely lost to time. Until it wasn’t. Memories are powerful things, and there is no sense more tightly bound to memory than our sense of smell. One whiff was all it took to carry me back in time, conjuring a vivid recollection of something long submerged in the inky depths of a subconscious mind. Look, I know as well as anyone that pipes are meant to be smoked, and that many feel it almost sacrilegious to have a pipe and not set it to its intended task. In this case, I simply can’t. I won’t. Ever. Rationally, I am fairly certain this pipe would probably be a great smoke. It was too well loved by its previous caretaker to be anything less than that. My choice not to smoke it is an emotional one, not something rational. Of the thousands of pipes that have passed through my hands over the years, this is the only one to create such a singular and vivid, almost Proustian recollection of temps perdu, of lost time. It revivified a long dormant memory that is mine, and mine alone, and that’s enough. I keep it in a drawer with other old English pipes. In some ways, it’s nothing special, just a nice old pipe. I don’t lavish it with any particular care that arguably befits the hidden treasure that it holds. It’s not in a special box, or displayed preciously in a glass cabinet. Every once in a while, I take it out, point my nose bowlwards, and every time, those memories return just as powerfully as they did the first time. I have no idea how long it’s been since its last owner smoked it, but in the years I’ve had it, there seems to have been very little degradation of the aroma, and that’s […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 635. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with James Ravenwood. James is the boutique tobacco blender of Ravenwood Blends. His blending started out as a fun hobby, and he now has professionally packaged commercially available products with some great tin art. Part of his interest in pipe smoking goes back to fond memories of a retired Navy Veteran that lived on his street while he was growing up that would sit in his driveway smoking a pipe all day. Later, in 2011 he began smoking pipes and soon after started experimenting with mixing different tobaccos. His other hobby, that he has been doing for 30 years, is photography. He takes wonderful photos of outdoor spaces, and still life pictures of pipes and tobacco. You can see them on his Instagram @thebriarfellowship. At the top of the show we’ll have an Ask the Pipemaker segment with renowned pipe artisan Jeff Gracik.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 634! Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Warren Ertle. Warren is an extremely accomplished musician with a PhD in music. He started early as a percussionist in sixth grade. Later his grandmother got him a cheap Casio keyboard which he taught himself to play. He started playing in blues bands in high school, and has been a pianist with jazz big bands for years. Even though he was already a professional musician, he took his first real piano lesson when he enrolled in college with his studies in classical music. He is of course a pipe smoker. At the top of the show we will have an Ask the Tobacco Blender segment with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA.
Soon now, supposedly, our neighborhoods will shift from grinning pumpkins, skeletons in various assortments, and zombies dashing about to pretty reindeer, angels, and flashing lights illuminating homes with sparkling stars and laughing, scurrying Santas. But, lest we forget, there is the turkey season, fancy pie aromas wafting from kitchens, and a national pardon of a big Tom Turkey. Remember, now, that only one of these holiday personalities is a pipe smoker. And that is the hefty, bearded fellow in a bright red suit sitting in a sleigh with a herd of deer hitched up and ready to streak across the globe, bringing tidings of joy and many presents. Ok, the scene is set for the next couple of months, right? So, before we get too far off the beaten path, let’s just take a deep breath of fresh autumn air, shall we? Ahh. That’s better, isn’t it? What’s got the Pundit in a snit is not all the Halloween spooks who came a-jostling for candy. Or the wild turkeys gobbling in the backwoods or all the fuss and feathers over the big one—Christmas. No, it is that we might need to take note of all the little things that mean so much to us. Like a good sunrise (seriously, Pundit has not gone all Pollyanna.) Mayhaps we need to appreciate more of what we have than what we have not. Or something like that. Like, a good pipe in the morning with coffee as the dawn brings us coolish weather now that we have flipped the calendar to autumn. But it also brings beautiful leaves that have become a spectacle of technicolor in the wind. It is the little things. The rereading of an enjoyable book and finding something you did not see or learn in the first go-round. Or a stunning phrase you commit to memory with the re-read, while smoking that favorite pipe. And you notice a superior puff that just seems to be different. It’s in the air and the seasons of meaningful little things. It’s aromatic! Or perhaps it is that sense of satisfaction knowing and appreciating you made it to another day. With the world in a kind of rinse-and-repeat history, reminiscent of a Shakespearean play, it is perhaps a good moment to remember some of Pipedom’s philosophers whose cogent thoughts brought light to clear a path in the mists of confusion and confounding opinions. Ok. No gloom and doom. Just some down-home thoughts. Think of times in the past when history was running off the rails. It took our pipe-smoking thinkers (the mind workers of the world) to speak of better pathways to more light. Think for a moment, with a pipe in hand, these wizards of the world and word: Albert Einstein, J. R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edwin Hubble, Bertrand Russell, C. S. Lewis, and Jean-Paul Sartre. All learned and enlightened. They offered wisdom instead of storms of meaningless roads to nowhere. All while smoking their pipes! Maybe especially with the help of their pipes in the art of thinking and philosophy. Recall the words of Mr. E=MC2 when he said, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” Amen and amen! Dealing with world-rattling events takes a calm and objective view of things, to the Pundit’s way of summing it up. You just don’t go messing around with quantum physics without a calm and objective approach, methinks. Or as the extraordinary physicist Robert Oppenheimer said after he and a team in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Labs developed a way to split atoms into bombs during World War II. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” said Oppenheimer referring to the development of the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. It must be pointed out that Oppenheimer was more of a cigarette smoker than a pipe smoker. Nonetheless, pipes were part of his personality. Now, if you have read some of the great authors of the past and present, their pipes were always nearby. Reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be a three-pipe problem at times. S. Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre require time with your pipes to reflect on the existential problems and solutions these authors provide in learned novels and other narratives. Or take Edwin Hubble and Bertrand Russell, philosophers of another world. Pipes are required for reading. The quantum lode of ideas Pundit is attempting to sort out is that our pipes are relaxing and stimulate our thoughts and creativity. Especially in these last months of the year. Many times Pundit has had that light bulb flick on while smoking my beloved pipes. And friends in Pipedom, it ain’t easy to turn on the lights in Pundit’s rock pit head. Now it’s time for a quote from a Pipe Smoker of the Past. Shelby Foote was born Nov. 17, 1916, in Greenville, Miss., and died June 27, 2005, in Memphis, Tenn. A fact is not a truth until you love it—Shelby Foote. A parting thought: It is said that famed Southern author William Faulkner carried a packed pipe in a coat pocket wherever he went. That’s one effective way to deal with workday conflicts and confusion. A calm and objective judgment in our everyday human affairs, as the quantum man said.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 633. Our featured guest tonight is Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and the accompanying online store. We’ll have JD and Brian talking about what’s new at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, Brian will discuss tobacco growing, what happens to the leaf, and provide updated information on where tobacco is being gown today. Tobacco production originated in the United States and we were once the #1 producer. It’s quite different now.
Wonderful pipes I have some cobs that have been around longer than many of my briar.
I’ll be damned if I put my $60/lb. tobacco in cob! That’d be like eating filet mignon with a plastic knife and fork on a paper plate! 🙂
I love MM cobs. I have an entire rack dedicated to them. Heck, check out my screen name.
I’m smoking an MM Country Gentleman as I post this.
Oh, I have a few briars, but I’m basically a cob snob.
Great video, and it’s nice to see Phil and Marilyn in action.
I LOVE my many Missouri Meerschaum pipes, and one day I hope to learn how to pronounce it!
b
And cortezattic, I’m glad you enjoy your non-cob pipes.
I remember seeing a bill board at a junk yard once that said something like “Remember, your car is running on used parts”. In the end, the man who eats filet with a plastic fork is still eating filet.
Love my cobs. Best vehicle in the world for burley tobacco.
Loved that video and I love my MM Cobs.
Nice vid — Gotta say MM is just about the only American made product I am glad to own. Part of me wishes that were otherwise for nationalistic reasons that are perfectly natural the past 100 years or so on the global scale, and let’s face it. . .since the very beginning for the U.S.
I own two cobs myself, one is not MM and I don’t like it (just shoddy quality — made in south america judging by the name) the other is a MM Great Dane (Egg) that I love. Very smooth, very sweet, very nice. I also own a MM Old Hickory that I love as well. They’re a great company that knows what they’re doing and are absolutely fantastig.
Cobs aren’t as pretty as briars and clays when you get down to it in my opinion, but damn they smoke fine and that right there is the thing now isn’t it? Everyone knows there are three factors in the price of a briar — size, grain, and craftsman. With cobs its been pretty standardized on all three marks by MM so we can get a quality pipe for an unbeatable price, every time. Damn fine deal if you ask me.
Love the MM Cob that I’ve got. Was my first pipe and still use it more than the other 3 briars I now have.
Great quality and a fantastic smoke for a really cheap price. Perfect!
Wonderful video, what a great addition to the content here. I love the bit where the woman’s talking about sending pipes off the the boys in Iraq, and says she raided the boss’s desk to get some matches to throw in…that just spoke volumes about the human quotient that we all too often lose sight of in the post-industrial age. I think I’m feeling compelled to go purchase a couple more cobs today, I’ve had my eye on a spool that just whispers to me!
I happen to love my MM cobs,I have one or a few of just about everyone that they make other than the general and freehand. There are just such a great sweet smoke! I think if you haven’t smoked one, you should because you just don’t know what your missing! They’ve got my vote for favorites by far.
When I buy a MM cob, I know several things:
I’ve got more quality than what I spent.
I don’t have to worry if I burn the rim.
I don’t have to wait till they become estate pipes to afford them.
I don’t have to feel like being a PITA because I’m a snob like some others.
I think smoking a cob pipe shows humility and character that you won’t see within our all too few ranks of pipe smokers.
No matter what I put blend of tobacco I put in it, I’m going to enjoy the act of puffin’ regardless.
Just my couple thoughts on it. 🙂
@ cortezattic I hope you’re married. Cause if you’re not, then you should get used to washing fine china and special care to the silverware from eating your filet mignon. IF she knows how to cook it. :))
I ordered 2 cobs through this site- a Country Gentleman and a Great Dane Egg. Incredible smokers. Sorry I took so long to take the plunge; I’m a believer.
I’m an unabashed MM cob lover. (Hence, my screen name.)
Frankly, I could care less what the briar snobs think.
Their closed minds are unlikely to open.
However, I can understand their intolerance. About 30 years ago I had a rack full of briars and cobs weren’t even on my radar screen. I thought what hillbilly would smoke those?
It turns out that I’m THAT hillbilly.
Now, I have a rack full of MM cobs and only a handful of briars. Oh, I enjoy looking at and smoking a fine briar and admire the design and craftsmanship of pipes from around the world.
But at this stage in my life, image is not a concern.
A comfortable pipe at an affordable price is.
But, no matter the price, cobs offer quality, character and a satisfying smoking experience.
To my mind — to my taste — they not at all inferior to briars.
But they are different.
They are uniquely American.
And most importantly, MM cobs are superb smokers.
Yes, I live in Missouri and appreciate this country’s history and literature, and perhaps that carries a certain prejudice, accounting to some degree for my cob preference.
It cannot be denied that the cob boasts a rich heritage.
It’s a source of pride to those who make it, smoke it and admire it from afar.
Genuine Americana.
Uh oh, I fear I’ve actually become a cob snob.
Kevin,
This video and write up makes me want to bust the MM diplomat again. Thanks for reminding us and giving good word to U.S. made products.
My first pipe (back in college days) was a Missouri Meerschaum. I have six now that I enjoy for a quick smoke.
VERY KEWL video! But it still didn’t solve the mystery of the lines with hardwood plug bottoms (and burn-stamp logos vs. the sticker labels)
Mr. Cortezattic, many would be grateful to even have $60lb tobac period. And Ya might even enjoy more of your blessed weed using cobs on occassion due to the fact that one needn’t be fussy about cleaning them as diligently as a $100+ briar which I’m sure you are familiar with.
Myself,I smoke glp Cumberland(for instance), and it’s $35 1/2lb. = $70lb., in cob, clay, and briar, and meer. Each mode of incinerating tobacco brings forth a different pleasant and rewarding experience. And neither mode of incineration devalues the very pricey blends we smoke. But that’s just me talkin’!
I’have been smoking almost only my new “legend” MM pipe during the last three months, so I think that I’m in love with this kind pipe.
Beyond all my expectations as quality of smoke and it is also very light:
ideal when you are out for a walk.
I love MM corncobs, too. I have 5 so far (and about same number of briars). My favorites styles are the Diplomats and Danish Egg — Legends aren’t bad either (I like them for burning flake). None of my cobs are anywhere near burned through, because I install a small heavy aluminum-foil perforated disk in the bottoms (I got the idea from Scott’s [www.aristocob.com] demo of the original Aristocob pipe system with the cob inserts). Also, I switch out the angular amber stems for the danish-style bent stems. I plan to keep on smoking cobs until the come and arrest me for using tobacco.
This video made me finally pull the trigger, and I bought two MM cobs pipes. Wow, is all I can say! They smoke beautifully, are cool, and as so uniquely American, that I just love them. I’ve owned $1000 Danish pipes and $600 Dunhills that don’t smoke as well as these corn cobs. I’m really serious. One day I’ll own a half dozen of these, and it’s just fun!
Tibbe is pronounced as tiebbeh isn’t?
I love corncob pipes :)!
Greetings from The Netherlands!