The great day finally arrived when a phone call from Tim West at L H Lowe announced that after a year and a half he had finished the work on some of my 'walking wounded' meerschaum pipes and was ready to ship them to me. Firstly the results speak for themselves as the man is a true genius and one of only two pipe repairers in the meerschaum space I would recommend, the other being Ric down at Briarville. When you are dealing with 120+ plus year old pipes you do not want your pipes repaired by Rube Goldberg as I had a 'cutty' pipe enhanced once when a someone thought it was a brilliant idea to change the dynamics of one of my pipes by grinding off its foot, in essence that chap castrated my poor pipe! Suffice to say I have never sent this gentleman another one of my pipes to work on again!
Most of the pipes shown here are the 12' variety of 'cutty' pipes that I have really stopped buying over the last few years as they are a little difficult to smoke whilst walking down the street and are fragile. In the last year or so I have been focusing on the 6 1/2 " traditional 'cutty' as these are more convenient for carrying around and smoking outdoors in beer gardens and such like during the summer months. The 12" pipes are very good for indoor smoking whilst working in the office but since I have so many of these pipes I think in the future I will be have a little sale of these so interested parties do PM me if you want to own a genuine Condorlover1 meerschaum pipe!
The first pipe is a delightful 7" 'cutty' and you can see by the 'cant' of the pipe the style is certainly a mirror image of the popular mid 1870s clay pipe that is commonly found as a broken fragment all around the UK on Victorian rubbish dumps and on the Thames foreshore. This one has had a reinforced silver band added along with a new stem with the bone tenion opened out for better air flow and draw. It has colored well over the last century with a fair amount of color added by my heavy consumption of black twist and Condor Plug through this pipe.
The next one is a 12" straw with case probably French from the late 1880s with original amber stem that has had a silver band added and the damaged threads repaired and made good. This pipe shows all the hall marks of the classic French Parisian pipe makers style. I don't know who made this pipe but the bowl size is certainly of the ilk that you can fill the pipe on a Sunday and smoke it all week.
Most of the pipes shown here are the 12' variety of 'cutty' pipes that I have really stopped buying over the last few years as they are a little difficult to smoke whilst walking down the street and are fragile. In the last year or so I have been focusing on the 6 1/2 " traditional 'cutty' as these are more convenient for carrying around and smoking outdoors in beer gardens and such like during the summer months. The 12" pipes are very good for indoor smoking whilst working in the office but since I have so many of these pipes I think in the future I will be have a little sale of these so interested parties do PM me if you want to own a genuine Condorlover1 meerschaum pipe!
The first pipe is a delightful 7" 'cutty' and you can see by the 'cant' of the pipe the style is certainly a mirror image of the popular mid 1870s clay pipe that is commonly found as a broken fragment all around the UK on Victorian rubbish dumps and on the Thames foreshore. This one has had a reinforced silver band added along with a new stem with the bone tenion opened out for better air flow and draw. It has colored well over the last century with a fair amount of color added by my heavy consumption of black twist and Condor Plug through this pipe.
The next one is a 12" straw with case probably French from the late 1880s with original amber stem that has had a silver band added and the damaged threads repaired and made good. This pipe shows all the hall marks of the classic French Parisian pipe makers style. I don't know who made this pipe but the bowl size is certainly of the ilk that you can fill the pipe on a Sunday and smoke it all week.
