Amazing carvings, left unsmoked?

[jvnshr]

I've got a meerschaum and several briars purchased just to look at.

also to plant some flowers

 

[Waning Embers]

also to plant some flowers

That's just for badly drilled garbage.

 

[condorlover1]

I have a couple of 1870s meerschaum 'cutty' pipes that have never been smoked with pristine cases in a drawer somewhere. They are interesting pipes to look at and I take the view that if someone has taken the trouble to preserve them for posterity then I should do the same.

 

[JC4life]

I have a couple of 1870s meerschaum 'cutty' pipes that have never been smoked with pristine cases in a drawer somewhere. They are interesting pipes to look at and I take the view that if someone has taken the trouble to preserve them for posterity then I should do the same.

That's a good point. I'm of the view that a pipe is there to be smoked, but, in that instance I would have to agree. Can you imagine dropping one in a freak accident? All those years of safekeeping and that pristine link with the past lost in an moment. Ouch!

 

[proteus]

Depends on if I'm buying the pipe to collect it and treat it as art or to smoke it.

 

[PaulRVA]

Smoking the Yanik buffalo right now as a matter of fact. It's an occasional smoker, but I love the carving so much that I'm glad I have it even if I didn't smoke it.

View attachment 230838

That’s unbelievably badass !

 

[brian64]

That’s unbelievably badass !

Thank you. Yanik is a badass artist. IMO, there is no meer carver more talented out there.

Unfortunately the drilling on it is horrendous...goes in underneath the bowl with a giant gaping opening, which is partly why I don't smoke it often...also because it has a huge chamber, so I have to use it when I have time for it. I've developed a method of dealing with the drilling issue by inserting a small piece of a falcon filter into the hole.

 

[sablebrush52]

I have a half dozen pipes that I don't and won't be smoking. Some of them are 100 and more years old, and I like that they're like a little time capsule. And no, their "destiny" is not to be smoked, at least by me. I don't believe in that "destiny" crap, anyway.
Everything else, including already smoked pipes that are 140+ years old, get smoked.

 

[AJL67]

I buy pipes to smoke them.

 

[mso489]

Though I've never bought a pipe to preserve only as a work of art, I have bought a few works of art, paintings, and a carving or two. One painting by a New York artist was of a waterfall, and when I wrote the artist it turned out it was painted on location at a waterfall my late wife and I had visited in Michigan. I found that was pleasingly mystical, or poetic anyway.

I bought a wood carving of Buddha for next to nothing, but it has colored beautifully and over the years I have realized it is a somewhat accomplished piece, undoubtedly done just as a commercial object, but by experienced hands.

Pipes I feel improve in their auras with smoking.

 

[jonasclark]

I smoke aromatics, and I know they ghost even harder in a meerschaum. Three of my Bekler abstracts are unsmoked, and I'd rather leave them in case a future owner does not want to use them for sweet stuff.

 

[didimauw]

I buy meerschaum mainly to color them. It's a bonus that I love how they smoke. I don't like the look of brand new meers.

Coloring them is like a badge of honor.

 

[pappymac]

You guys who own pipes that you never smoke are paragons of self-control.

I don't have a pipe I haven't smoked several times.

 

[burleybreath]

I have half a dozen pipes I haven't smoked yet, but it's not due to lack of intent. I simply haven't had time to get to them. This is the only thing that has put a damper on my PAD--i. e., knowing that my buying another pipe is suggestive of stupidity, or a mental disorder. (Not that there's anything "wrong" with having 50 or 500 pipes, of course. Sniff.)