Another enjoyable article by the Pundit.
He’s lucky to have a wife who isn’t rendered stupid by a pretty pipe.
As interesting and attractive as Danish pipes are, I just can't justify the pricing for myself and feel that it's just a complete marketing scam.
Neither wife cared about what I spent on pipes and tobaccos.
Wife #1, who I married while in college, was way too busy studying, working out, or having orgasms to care about tobacco pipes. I didn't have the income to buy anything over $25 anyway. Besides, at that age orgasms were a lot more interesting and a lot cheaper.
Wife #2's father was a major Dunhill collector who had nearly a thousand Dunhill pipes, all in mint condition, from every era. None of the pipes were in racks, except for three in current rotation. They were all neatly tucked away in fitted felt lined drawers in a converted antique wooden rotating hardware case that originally held screws, bolts and nuts.
Besides the pipes he had display cases of Dunhill gold and sterling lighters, cuff links, tie clips, jewelry and leather goods, along with his walk in humidor stocked with the best in Cuban cigars, all contraband, and other toys like his gun collection, on display in what had been Igor Stravinsky's studio before he bought the house from Stravinsky. Then again, with an income of around $40,000 a week in today's dollars, he could afford his toys.
So wife #2 had no concerns around the cost of pipes. Nope, it was me who placed a strict budget on my pipe and tobacco obsession. Were it not for that I would have a much larger and more impressive collection than I do, but I'm content with pictures of the Barlings that went above my spending limit. I'm more a student of Britwood than a collector, though I do have a few decent pipes. I just snapped them up for less than market at a time when that was easier to do than it is today.
There are no regrets, an utter waste of time, about the "ones that got away". It was my "fuck no" decision to move on.
At this point in my life, adding to, rather than divesting of, makes less sense.
My library is 2/3rds smaller than it was before I moved, and I'm quite happy with what is left. These are the books that interest me personally, more than being the reference library I had built up over the years. 3/4ths the art books went to the Brand Art Library where they can be of some use to others. That was surprisingly edifying.
Less really is more.
