2011 C.O.R.P.S. Show – Richmond Virginia
-
Kevin Godbee - Nov 11, 2011
- 7 min read
By Kevin Godbee
Richmond Virginia is steeped in tobacco history and tradition, and that makes it a great location for an exposition dedicated to pipes and tobacco. The second weekend of October was the 27th year in a row that the C.O.R.P.S Exposition & Celebration was held. It’s quite impressive, and no small feat to have a show catering to pipe smokers with a 27-year history.
C.O.R.P.S. stands for Conclave of Richmond Pipe Smokers. They are one of the largest pipe clubs and have been based in Richmond since 1984. This year the show changed venues from the Holiday Inn to the more posh surroundings of the Hilton Richmond Hotel & Spa. The hotel is in the Richmond area, but technically, the actual town is Short Pump, VA.
Personally, I liked the new location for a couple of reasons. Even though the Hilton is a little more expensive, it is of course a much nicer hotel. You get what you pay for, and with what some of us spend on pipes and tobaccos, I can’t see why anyone would complain to pay a little more for a room in a much nicer hotel. They did overbook the smoking rooms and seemed to hand them out on a first case basis, leaving some that were promised a smoking room without one, including myself. I could see some complaints about that, and there were. However, the solution was to make friends with someone that had one, and pipe smoking at a show is certainly about socializing anyway. I liked the town of Short Pump as well. It seems like a new, or revitalized town, if it is not new. There was lots of new building going on and there were several convenient nearby shopping and restaurants, many within walking distance. So if you didn’t want to spend extra dineros on dinner at the on-site Don Shula’s Steak House, you could walk a block or two to a Spanish Tapas or a Mexican restaurant.
The question I always get asked after every show is; "How was the show?"The short answer is; "It depends on who you ask." Personally, I can’t really have a bad show. I can ask ten different people and get ten different answers though. Speaking generally about all shows, there are always some people that say they had a bad show. This is usually the case if they didn’t sell enough product to cover the costs of travel and table space. There are always people that say they had a good show. To me, any show is what you make of it, and I am of the opinion that you can’t measure the return solely on just the immediate sales you made.
Interestingly, for this recent 2011 C.O.R.P.S. show, there were some past regular exhibitors that didn’t show, however, the local walk-in traffic was up from last year according to club president Craig Norris. It seems like we are still following the trend of the last few years with new blood entering the hobby.
One of the great things about the C.O.R.P.S. show is that you can smoke in the exhibit hall, and there were two other rooms to smoke in as well – a 3/4ths walled-off adjacent to the exhibit hall with tables for coffee (provided free) or lunch breaks, plus another room across the hall. I spent the evenings drinking, smoking and socializing in the banquet smoking room across the hall. There was a bar set up nearby. The bartender’s tip jar was pipe themed for the event. It was actually his dad’s two meerschaum pipes and tobacco jar, which you can see in the photo on the right.
I arrived at the hotel at 2:00 pm on Friday and there was already a contingent waiting to check in, and more people arriving every minute. By late afternoon there were already a number of people smoking and mingling in the smaller smoking room, and the bar was already in action.
Here are just a small fraction of the photos I took spanning the weekend to give you a general feel of the events from Friday late-afternoon into Sunday afternoon. As you can see from the pictures, The C.O.R.P.S. Show is certainly substantial, with a meaningful attendance.
For many pipe smokers, the enjoyment of the pipe is usually a solitary activity. Often this is fine, as pipe smoking is a relaxing thing to do, and it is easy to clear one’s mind and slow down in peace and quiet. In contrast and in similarity, I find that being at a pipe show in a room with over 100 people that all love pipes and pipe smoking is a truly uplifting experience. For some reason, any tobacco I smoke at a pipe show always tastes better. The camaraderie of the community, seeing old friends and making new ones – friends that are all pipe smokers – is an awesome event.
See if you recognize any of these people in this gallery.
At times, certain pipe makers are referred to as being "Artisans". I would describe Olie Sylvester as being "Artsy" and truly unique and creative with his line of Monstrosity Pipes.
The pipe on the left is the "Coons Tooth Pipe". Olie describes it as; "There is a raccoon’s tooth coming out the back of it. It’s a meerschaum bowl set inside of a corncob bowl with a piece of hardwood coming out for the shank. Around that is Spanish Moss from De Leon Springs, Florida, and then it ends up with a little piece of briar, which the stem goes into.
Olie explains the second pipe pictured below as a; "2-piece deal where you have a pipe that is sitting inside another half of a pipe. It’s held together with twine, but it’s secured in there really good. It has a Delrin tenon and it’s pressure fit. There’s nice big chunk of briar on the stem."
 |
 |
 |
Pipe maker Bob Hayes was displaying a unique pipe with an interesting and moving story behind it.
Last June was Craig and Patty Tarlar’s, the owners of Cornell & Diehl, 60th Wedding Anniversary. To celebrate, their family took some family-heirloom jewelry and re-set it into a pendant and earrings for Patty. Bob Hayes made a diamond shaped pipe as Craig’s gift.
After creating the concept, Bob collaborated with Alex Florov. He spent a week working with Alex in his shop in the Chicago area around the same time as the Chicago Pipe Show, and then finished the pipe in his own shop in North Carolina. Bob is in the "C&D family" as he is married to Craig & Patty’s daughter, Pam.
For the dinner celebration and party, they made custom placemats with a photo of Patty and Craig along with their marriage license from 1951. Craig was kind enough to send me one, so now when I eat breakfast every morning I can see Patty and Craig, and I will subliminally want to follow up breakfast with Bayou Morning Flake.
Last, but not least, Bob Swanson / Perry White Pipes won for the second time in four years for the "Best Pipe in Show". The winning pipe is a MAGNUM XL Rhodesian with Palm embellishment.
 |
 |
|
Kevin Godbee is the Publisher & Editor in Chief of Pipes Magazine. Kevin started smoking pipes and cigars in 1998 and started an online cigar magazine & community site in 2005. (The site was acquired in 2008 and no longer exists.) He launched PipesMagazine.com in 2009, and in less than three years the site has become the largest trafficked pipe smoking related site, and the #1 Source for Pipes and Pipe Tobacco Information. In the beginning of his career, Kevin worked in the hobby and specialty toy business for 16 years in sales, marketing, advertising and product development for three different manufacturers, and with his own company. Over the last 10 years working in the online business, he has become an expert in Internet Marketing and SEO. Kevin is a Certified Master Tobacconist (CMT) through Tobacconist University, a member of Cigar Rights of America and is a "Media Member" of the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association. In his spare time he sings, plays guitar, cooks, and enjoys all the wonderful places to go and things to do in beautiful downtown St. Petersburg, Florida where he lives in his penthouse bachelor pad. Kevin has been smoking pipes and cigars for 14 years. |
Written by Kevin Godbee
16 Responses
Recent Posts
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.
Well there’s nothing like a touch of the plague to usher in the changing season. Leaving the airport just when the first advertisements for all things pumpkin spice began to appear—lattes, muffins, shampoos, trash bags, and myriad other concoctions—so, too, my ability to breathe freely disappeared. The unfortunate side effect of losing one’s sense of taste and smell for weeks is the utter inability to enjoy tobacco. Not that I consider myself an expert on anything but my own tastes, but be forewarned that this review was made with mildly impugned sensory equipment. Just when a comforting pipe was most needed, its comfort was denied. Be that as it may, the road to recovery found me limping along on one lung this past month, trying to wrest the particulars of two blends on offer from Sutliff: the latest 175th Anniversary blend, Silver Quarter, as well as their spooky seasonal Maple Shadows II. Silver Quarter is a new style on offer from Sutliff, their first coin-cut blend. Naturally a Virginia-Perique, it is enhanced with a traditional core of black Cavendish. In the tin it holds much promise, with a lightly bready and very woody, if ever-so-slightly sour, aroma. After some time acclimating to air, the bouquet softens further and offers hints of the burley with some chocolaty notes wafting through the more dominant dry grassy aspect. The tin art is of a coin-style bas-relief bust, presumably of a founding Sutliff brother, à la The Old Boss On the reverse of the tin we find the blend’s description: Reflecting on Sutliffs 175 years of tobacco excellence, we came across a brand that embodies true value, SILVER QUARTER. This name pays homage to Sutliffs roots, the legacy of two brothers who popularized pipe smoking in the burgeoning mining society of San Francisco. We celebrate this heritage with a coin cut composed of the finest African Virginias, complemented by a core of Perique and Black Cavendish. The tin notes are, forgive the pun, on the nose for a good VaPer blend: mild tart sweetness peeking out from behind dried hay and slight chocolate undertones, with a lightly tannic finish of weathered oak. It is always a joy to prepare a coin cut, my preference being to put a few in my palm and vigorously warm my hands together to fully break them apart. These well-formed discs pack and light easily, and smoke with little prodding to the end of the bowl. For technical points it scores well—it smokes light, and it’s easy to tend the ember. While it gets sharp after a few quick bowls, pacing should be heeded to easily smoke down to the heel without inviting bite. Of the flavor, though, I am left a bit wanting. There are tart and high notes aplenty, but very little of the lemony citrus I would anticipate, as well as scant midtones; they tend more toward the red wine-vinegary and sour. The flavors are muted, also, lacking the sweetness and piquancy of other marques—the small measure of Perique tickles the nose now and again with peppery hints, and there is a smidge of a deeper sweetness to be found in the Cavendish from puff to puff, but overall it lacks some dynamism. The Virginias, to my palate, come off a bit on the dry side, and here they dominate the blend. The aftertaste and mouthfeel are neutral, again evincing more of the dry, woody, tartly tannic end of the spectrum. The blend has plenty of polish, but not enough depth or richness (*yet) to make it a standout. Here, comparisons are inevitable: Luxury Bullseye Flake has more sweetness, both from its Virginia as well as its Cavendish, and a better finish; Davidoff is similar but with a pronounced umami that is absent here; as for Escudo, I haven’t had any fresh tins lately so it would be unfair to compare. While it rates as a solid, fairly mild smoke, particularly to lovers of the genre, it does not surprise with any exceptional flavors. To be fair, all the boxes have been checked for the blend to benefit from some real aging, and it would be worth checking in on this after a couple of years sealed away. I’ve set half my tin aside to sample again in a month or two, in case I’m merely suffering from the lingering effects of parosmia, and will amend this review in that case. Maple Shadows II, on the other hand, made up for the weeks of sniffling and sneezing I’d endured. Offered in a full 8 ounce tin with delightfully spooky Halloween art, it’s (hopefully) enough to last through the season. Somehow I had missed this last year, so it’s a real pleasure to get some in my candy bucket this year. As the chilling winds of autumn draw eerie prattle from contorted, deciduous limbs, we find ourselves possessed by the spirit of the season. Bewitched by a dissonant charm, we’ve created Maple Shadows. In a season that is defined by the unlikely harmony of treats and frights, we’ve joined the enchanting sweetness of maple with the earthy spice of Dark Fired Kentucky for a smoking experience that captures the senses with an otherworldly fusion of flavor. This may be the best aromatic blend Sutliff’s ever made—and they make a ton of them. First off, it’s not overbearing in the least—quite the opposite, it is also one of the more restrained aromatics they’ve ever made, with a clear but very light topping that melds oh-so-well with their choice Kentucky added to the mix. Opening the tin, the sweet maple is up front and center, but so too is the must of fallen leaves, bready pie crusts, and a crackling fire in the hearth—a perfect invocation of Herbstdüfte in a can. Packing best in an open and capacious bowl, the flavoring is subtle, and recedes to the background while puffing. With a sweet coffee or tea to accompany, the aftertaste of the maple is reinvigorated on the palate […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 632. Our featured guest on tonight’s show is the host of the Pipe & Tamper Podcast, Mike Murphy. Brian and Mike will have an extended chat revolving around the days before, during and after the Las Vegas International Pipe Show. We will hear about their travels to the show and the anxiety of Hurricane Milton bearing down on Florida at the same time while running a show and not knowing if your house is going to be there when you get home. In the end, the show went great and our homes survived, although many others in Florida were not so lucky. We’ll have clips from the show, and shoutouts to other podcasts and vlogs that were broadcasting from the pipe show.
Vegas Baby The show started out strong on the 14th floor hospitality suites hosted by the Vegas Pipe Show and Smoking Pipes as well as room hopping to carvers, estate sellers, and vendors to pre-game for the festivities. If you’re interested in what that looks like I’ll refer you to last years pipe show round up. I circled with Brian Levine to get the totals in comparison to last year: This year’s show numbers: 108 Exhibitor tables, 445 attendees, 3,250 Raffle Tickets, 100ish dinners, 172 Rooms in the Hotel. Last year, by comparison, 107 exhibitor tables, 425 attendees, 2,200 raffle tickets, 104 dinners, and 175 rooms on Friday and Saturday nights. We were at capacity, basically, when it came to vendor tables and the dinner, so there is no physical room for growth at this point except for attendees. That said, we filled that smoking lounge to the brim. New Carvers Spotlight Garret Woo (Pipes by Woo) How long have you been carving? Garret: I’ve been carving since 2021, and I’m guessing your next question is probably how’d you get started carving? James: Yes. Garret: In 2021 I took a break from my full time job – that included machining and assembly work and I thought maybe it was time I made something that I would like and I started looking at youtube and Instagram and putting together my shop. I did struggle on the stems to start and there was a lot of failure at the beginning. James: How many pipes have you made so far? Garret: I number my pipes, so I just finished up 186. James: What is your favorite shape you’ve been making? Garret: I really dig Canadians and pipes with longer shanks and lovat Canadian blends. I like to play with different shapes of stems on the longer shanked pipes. The billiard would be my go-to shape but I want to learn more techniques on freehanded shapes. I like to put brass and copper adornments on my pipes with my machining background it helps. James: What is the craziest thing you’ve seen at this show? Garret: The first thing that comes to mind is the table over there with C-Pipes with the shapes and the size and petiteness and the intricate details they did. You can check out what Garret is working on by going to his Instagram. Stefan Cashwell James: how long have you been carving? Stefan: about 3 years. James: What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen at the show? Stefan: The Adam Davidson pipe with the clear shape and the bamboo—I don’t know if it’s 3D printed or what, but it’s amazing. James: What’s your favorite shape to do? Stefan: That’s a tough question. I think they’re all the same shape, but what’s fascinating is that Dublin, volcano, and blowfish are all the same depending on how you turn them. Playing with that, with all its variations, is a lot of fun. My favorite accent to use is also horn; it’s finicky, but it’s a great accent on pipes. You can check out Stefan’s work on his Instagram. Science: Meet Pipes I chatted with Chris from the San Diego Pipe Club; he started off doing stem replacements for estate pipes but also improved the airflow. James: How are you doing 3d printing? What is the thought process? Chris: It’s a 3D-printed pipe with a briar insert. The design is a calabash meets a Peterson system meets a metal Falcon/Kirsten radiator style. It is a bottom draft smoking bowl like a radiator like those metal pipes. The inside chamber is a calabash. The stummel and accent rings in the stems are all 3d printed. The insert is briar, olive wood, or I have the potential to use meerschaum as well. This idea came about through the San Diego Pipe Club, wanting to see if we could 3D print a pipe and being curious about the technology; I have a printer and design ability, so here we are. James: What’s the type of plastic you’re using? Chris: It’s all PLA plastic, a renewable potato starch plastic that is food-safe. The stummels are printed with a plastic that has wood in it 40% wood fiber, bamboo, rosewood, ebony, redwood, and walnut are the woods I’m printing. For the accent rings I just got a new material that I’m printing that has 40% copper, so its real metal that you can sand, and polish the same as wood filament. The stems are 3d printed as well. The concept is renewable and cheap from a production standpoint, with the ability to make a very high quality smoking pipe based on the experience. By combining the calabash system pipe and bottom draft hole and using 3d simulations to see airflow, I can see where I’m having eddies and ripples in my current, and see where my moisture and all the particles are dropping back out from a vapor to a liquid. Most people who have tried these say the stems are clean, and they don’t even have to run a pipe cleaner afterward because everything collects at the bottom. Chris has also been experimenting with color-changing plastics so you can see the hotspots. Chris said he was able to use this to slow down his cadence, which, of course, could mean you could get a slow-smoke training pipe to teach yourself to perform better. If you’re interested in learning more or want to check one out, you can contact him on Instagram: Copper Beard Pipe Works The Negative Space The show was buzzing about one specific pipe, which had everyone guessing how it was made. I chatted with Adam Davidson briefly about it. James: How did this idea come to fruition? Adam Davidson: Smokingpipes.com had an expo back in August open to all of the makers they carry. The theme was to make a pipe utilizing bamboo. Given that the last time we had the expo I made a smooth Almond with three bamboo shanks, […]
Kevin,
Thanks for a great review of a wonderful pipe show. The photos are an added bonus and I’m sure your coverage of the event will entice more and more of the members here to seek out any pipe shows in their vicinity or travel cross country to enjoy them as I do!!
Pipe friendly
Andy Camire
Thanks Andy. It was great seeing you there.
Thanks for sharing – and all of the pictures. Looks like it was one helluva good time!
Wow
You are my hero…..great pics and write-up…I’m making a vow to attend next years show after seeing this.
Awesome article and pipe show!
I can’t get enough of those Monstrosity pipes by Olie Sylvester! And the Picture quality needs to be high high higher! I just love them so much! How the heck does one go about obtaining a racoon tooth? Haha.
Thanks again Kevin.
Great stuff.
Great Report and Pictures! Almost like I was there!
Nobody can put on a pipe show like the guys from CORPS. I have been coming up from N.C.to attend this annual event for 25 years and each year is better than the last! Kudos to the CORPS.See you next year, God willing.
Thanks for a great report. The pix were super …I always come away from articles like this wanting more. (Now, who wouldn’t want to eat at Shula’s?) 🙂
Shula’s is obviously awesome, but I was “steaked out” after going on a carnivorous binge before Richmond, and I felt like Mexican food. 🙂
Nice to see the faces behind the names, quite a few I know via the web but never seen their faces. Super thanks Kevin for so many fotos and great commentaries.
Enjoyed the write-up Ken..sorry I missed you. I came down on Sunday to take advantage of the sales. keep up the excellent work!!!
Funn
It was a fun show and I enjoyed the time you and I spent talking while there. I look forward to my next show, I wish they would hold one in Texas!
Looks like a great chance to see a lot of pipes and assorted accessories. When will the 2012 show be held?
@ chandlerjr – They didn’t have dates at the close of the show as they had to see what could be arranged with the hotel for next year. I’ll check with them and see if there’s any news.
Guaaauu. Great night!!!
Wonderful!