Ruminations on the Soul of a Pipe

[Briar Lee]

Thirty some years ago I hired a pair of identical twins to assist me in my law office and I discovered that two identical people in every way, have seperate souls.

Their mother and I could instantly tell them apart but few others could, they claimed.

This morning I’m savoring an Albert Cowan Hand Made.



We know Albert had a pipe shop and Lewis Cowan was a carver for Marxman.



Both my Marxman Big Boy and my Cowan Hand Made were made of a certain grade of Pre 54 Algerian briar that was carefully selected and cured the same way. They color a dark reddish oxblood mahogany while you look at them, and are as porous as a sponge, and sweat the same.

Yet their makers gave them two different souls. Each tastes a tiny bit different.

Do not tell me God, didn’t plant heath shrubs in Alergia, for the pipe makers to discover.

During the time these pipes were made over thirty million each year were made only in the United States.

All we have to do is pick from all the survivors.

Are you as sure and certain each pipe has a soul, as I am?

 

[sablebrush52]

Thirty some years ago I hired a pair of identical twins to assist me in my law office and I discovered that two identical people in every way, have seperate souls.

Their mother and I could instantly tell them apart but few others could, they claimed.

This morning I’m savoring an Albert Cowan Hand Made.

View attachment 376710

We know Albert had a pipe shop and Lewis Cowan was a carver for Marxman.

View attachment 376711

Both my Marxman Big Boy and my Cowan Hand Made were made of certain grade of Pre 54 Algerian briar that was carefully selected and cured the same way. They color a dark reddish oxblood mahogany while you look at them, and are as porous as a sponge, and sweat the same.

Yet their makers gave them two different souls. Each tastes a tiny bit different.

Do not tell me God, didn’t plant heath shrubs in Alergia, for the pipe makers to discover.

During the time these pipes were made over thirty million each year were made only in the United States.

All we have to do is pick from all the survivors.

Are you as sure and certain each pipe has a soul, as I am?

These days I’m not sure and certain that people have souls, much less pipes.

Dogs, on the other hand…

 

[HawkeyeLinus]

I can get nostalgic about all sorts of inanimate things because I associate them with memories and no doubt also may include certain people, but souls? Not an idea that resonates with me, sorry.

 

[Briar Lee]

We read of Kaywoodie discovering and hauling out enormous, huge burls over four hundred years old from Greece before the war, and using X ray machines to help cut them, much like a diamond cutter would a stone from South Africa.



And then the Nazis came in 1941 and abruptly put a stop to that trade.

German invasion of Greece - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

I own two Kaywoodie 12B Pre War Large Flame Grain Dublins, yet each has a different soul, although perhaps cut from the same ancient heath shrub God sprouted in Greece before Columbus sailed to discover a shorter route to India.

I know the Algerian briar that Cowan and Marxman used for their best grades took much the same journey to New York, New York as my Kaywoodies.

I’m sipping the same tobacco from the same bag in my $15 grade Big Boy as I did my Hand Made Cowan and they both turn oxblood as I smoke, both sweat, and yet the Big Boy is lighter, brighter, and less bold than the Cowan.



What else but different souls could explain it?

Random chance?

 

[telescopes]

What else but different souls could explain it?

Random chance?

Yes. Unless of course you are an animist. My time spent with the Hmong people of Laos and attending their magical ceremonies suggest you might have more in common with their world view. Interesting. I haven’t thought about that time in years.

 

[crashthegrey]

If you could see the pile of aged briar I still use to make every Kaywoodie pipe. A 28 foot trailer full of it, all over sixty years old already. A lifetime supply, more than likely.

 

[telescopes]

If you could see the pile of aged briar I still use to make every Kaywoodie pipe. A 28 foot trailer full of it, all over sixty years old already. A lifetime supply, more than likely.

Which leads to the question, are you now the owner of Kaywoodie?

 

[Briar Lee]

Yes. Unless of course you are an animist. My time spent with the Hmong people of Laos and attending their magical ceremonies suggest you might have more in common with their world view. Interesting. I haven’t thought about that time in years.

The Hmong tribe of Laos and the Christian culture of Bug Tussle Missouri were all created the perfect children of God, or else there was a big bang and then we all evolved from a single cell that split into two cells and one cell said to the other cell, hey baby, you sure have a fancy walk.

(Not my line, but that of Old Cowboy Larry Lee Floyd)

Larry used to advise us boys how to catch those movie star grade girls.

Larry Lee Floyd (1943-1991) - Find a Grave...

www.findagrave.com

Women still go out to Larry’s grave and leave their bottles of screwdriver, it’s a sort of shrine to his memory.

Larry Lee Floyd, for all his gambling, drinking and women without any possible number, I know had a soul, and I know is still living in the same place it came from.

Larry Floyd would never lie, to deceive the innocent.

His mother raised him better.

Among the Hmong there are Larry Floyd souls.


And if Algerian brair does not have a soul, here’s proof according to the Gospel of the House of Bertram 1950.

1950 Pipes By Bertram ( Washington, DC) : https://historypipe.blogspot.com : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Bertram smoking pipes catalog

archive.org

Bertram sold Algerian pipes from $1.50 to $25 or whatever special grade you wanted.

Each one, had a unique soul.

 

[Briar Lee]

If you could see the pile of aged briar I still use to make every Kaywoodie pipe. A 28 foot trailer full of it, all over sixty years old already. A lifetime supply, more than likely.

Gee, I’ll bet somebody created that briar over sixty years ago.

Were you there when it sprouted?

Or when it was dug?

Who graded it?

And that’s a bunch of burls.

How do you select them, pray tell?

Is each pipe a little different, anyway?

 

[crashthegrey]

Which leads to the question, are you now the owner of Kaywoodie?

For almost a year now. Bill asked me to take it all over after all of the health issues. I am incredibly fortunate to have studied in the factory under him.

 

[crashthegrey]

Gee, I’ll bet somebody created that briar over sixty years ago.

Were you there when it sprouted?

Or when it was dug?

Who graded it?

And that’s a bunch of burls.

How do you select them, pray tell?

Is each pipe a little different, anyway?

This is an odd set of questions. I am forty-two, which probably answers most of them...
I grade it when I grade the batch of pipes I finish. Yes, every pipe is unique.

 

[Briarcutter]

Are you as sure and certain each pipe has a soul, as I am?

A soul? Not in the least. Personality (so to speak) from the carver, sure. Characteristics from the growing region, sure. A "soul"?...... No

 

[Briar Lee]

A soul? Not in the least. Personality (so to speak) from the carver, sure. Characteristics from the growing region, sure. A "soul"?...... No

In the same way my cats have two different personalities I suppose.

They both think they own me, and they are more right than wrong.

I’m certain my cats have souls, just not sure if they are eternal.

 

[MisterBadger]

Everything that is alive must be possessed of a vital essence of some sort. When the physical vehicle of that vital essence can no longer support it, physical death occurs and the vital essence, if not individualised by a consciousness of self, will return whence it came. Dowsers and water-diviners will cut their forks or rods from a tree under the full moon, because the energetic, electromagnetic life of a being - vegetable or animal - is anchored in the salts of its body fluids: blood for animals, sap for trees, and only when the tidal pull of the moon is at full is the 'soul' of the tree unable to retreat to its root when the stem is cut. Thus the diviner uses a rod that is, at least for a time, animate. Now, if the root is also dug up (of a briar, say, and in the moon's second quarter), it could in theory be possible that that briar root is, at least temporarily, animate - but the processing treatment it then undergoes prior to cutting and shaping into stummels, would surely expel and dissipate that vital essence. That's my take on it, anyway.

 

[sablebrush52]

If you could see the pile of aged briar I still use to make every Kaywoodie pipe. A 28 foot trailer full of it, all over sixty years old already. A lifetime supply, more than likely.

I'm a little confused. Are you saying that the stock is over 60 years old, or that the burls had been in the ground for 60 years before harvesting?

 

[sablebrush52]

We read of Kaywoodie discovering and hauling out enormous, huge burls over four hundred years old from Greece before the war, and using X ray machines to help cut them, much like a diamond cutter would a stone from South Africa.

View attachment 376738

And then the Nazis came in 1941 and abruptly put a stop to that trade.

German invasion of Greece - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

View attachment 376737

I own two Kaywoodie 12B Pre War Large Flame Grain Dublins, yet each has a different soul, although perhaps cut from the same ancient heath shrub God sprouted in Greece before Columbus sailed to discover a shorter route to India.

I know the Algerian briar that Cowan and Marxman used for their best grades took much the same journey to New York, New York as my Kaywoodies.

I’m sipping the same tobacco from the same bag in my $15 grade Big Boy as I did my Hand Made Cowan and they both turn oxblood as I smoke, both sweat, and yet the Big Boy is lighter, brighter, and less bold than the Cowan.

View attachment 376746

What else but different souls could explain it?

Random chance?

Copy writing explains it. 400 year old burls for use in pipes is BS. You know that back in the day, pretty much any time before the 1970's, advertising could make any sort of claim without any sort of consequence.

 

[The Benedictine]

In my druid tradition everything has a life-force.

 

[HawkeyeLinus]

In the same way my cats have two different personalities I suppose.

They both think they own me, and they are more right than wrong.

I’m certain my cats have souls, just not sure if they are eternal.

I'm certain they absolutely do ---- they aren't made of wood!

 

[jpberg]

I with the OP. I bought a Castello about ten years ago that had no soul.
It was just lifeless, nothing worked in it.
Pipes have souls. Well, most of them.

 

[Briar Lee]

Copy writing explains it. 400 year old burls for use in pipes is BS. You know that back in the day, pretty much any time before the 1970's, advertising could make any sort of claim without any sort of consequence.

Oh that’s the line we were taught!

But on this very thread is a man who owns all the rights to Kaywoodie.

In the year 1937 AD the Library of Congress recorded every magazine Kaywoodie paid to advertise in.

Either Kaywoodie paid people to lie, with sales of 11 million pipes a year at stake and thousands of workers any one of which might have a secret grudge and expose them as frauds, and the photographers who recorded photos of giant 400 plus year old Grecian burl roots and new X Ray machines staged the photos, or it was essentially true.

I’ll bet a dollar Kaywoodie was righteous!

One thing we do know is Kaywoodie was in for the duration of the war.




Imagine paying to advertise

WAR BONDS COME FIRST

And in the darkest days of a war raging across two wide oceans with 95% tax rates and no pipes sold that were not righteous.

We know how that war ended, but Kaywoodie is alive yet.