Info, please: M. B. Cannon - Murnon from 1910's

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jguss

Lifer
Jul 7, 2013
2,646
7,159
One is curious as to just how you know the above, Mr. Guss!

It’s all about marketing; as everyone knows sex sells. I learned long ago how to make my eBay listings appear at the top of the most common searches. Doesn't matter if your hawking old vinyl, vintage clothing, or that macrame bedspread the aunt you hated gave you for your wedding. I always add the words highly erotic, and available to mature buyers only somewhere in the listing title and/or description. Works every time.
 

AroEnglish

Rehabilitant
Jan 7, 2020
5,150
15,139
#62
So I was going to wait a little longer before cracking into one of these, but considering that today is International Pipe Smoking Day, I figured that there's no better time to test some of this out.

View attachment 290002
This package is over 100 years old and, all things considered, in nearly pristine condition. Truthfully, part of me feels like I'm desecrating something by opening this up. But I am of the opinion that tobacco was meant to be smoked.

View attachment 290003
Opening up the outside paper, I can get a better view of the foil inside.

View attachment 290004I'm fairly certain that this is tin foil. It's a little thicker and more rigid than aluminum foil. At this stage, I still can't smell anything when I hold my nose to the foil package.

View attachment 290005
Opening up the foil, I can see that the tobacco itself is wrapped in a layer of paper. I'm by no means an expert, so I can't identify what kind of blend this is based on sight alone. The coloring isn't uniform; it's definitely a blend of some kind. It looks similar to the English blends I am familiar with--Nightcap, Engine 99, and the like.

To my surprise, I can smell a tobaccoey sweetness. It's faint and mingled with the mellow mustiness of age, but it's there.


View attachment 290011
I poured half the package into a jar. Here, you can see the coloring a little better. This stuff is beyond dry. It's crispy. I want to try rehydrating this to see if it makes a difference in the taste/smoking, but that'll be a project for another day.

View attachment 290012
I figured that any taste I'll be able to get out of this tobacco will be very faint, so I'm smoking it out of a new clay pipe. That way, I can be sure that any flavors I pick up are from this tobacco and not the remnants of some other blend I'd smoked previously or flavors from the pipe itself.

As far as the taste goes: Before smoking this, I was expecting, at best, the taste of papery hot air, and at worst, the bitterness of burning mold. But wow, was I pleasantly surprised. To preface, I have neither the experience, palate, nor vocabulary to be a very good tobacco reviewer, but I can tell you that this tastes like an English blend to me. It's muted, sure, but it's still an English--and a pretty good one at that. Everything I've read about aged tobaccos suggests that Latakia's flavor fades with time, but I swear I can still taste that smoky goodness. Or is that just the complex flavor of a hundred-year-old Virginia? I don't really know. I can't pick up any casing on this--if it ever had one, it faded long ago, probably during the latter years of the Roosevelt administration.

My pipe was 3/4 full, but this was a very quick smoke, likely due to how dry this stuff was. Hopefully my rehydration experiment pays off!

To be continued...
Wow, thanks for sharing this journey with us! I’m looking forward to how future smokes go, hydrated or not.
 
Apr 2, 2018
3,349
40,040
Idong,South Korea.
Welcome from the Central Coast of California!

Title shortened. Original:


M. B. Cannon - Murnon from 1910's. Anyone know anything about this company/brand?


I bought these bags on a whim at a local auction and wanted to see if any tobacco historians here could help shed some light on what I've got. From what I can tell, Cannon's was a cigar/tobacco shop in Ohio. Not sure when they were founded or when they went out of business.

These look to be from 1910 (the bigger package) and 1917 (the smaller packages). I haven't opened any of them, but I can see/feel some soft metal inside the wrapping - tin, maybe? No discernible smell from the outside of the wrapping. I have no idea what kind of blend these are.

I'm going to dig around online to see if I can find any additional info and will keep you all updated!

View attachment 289810View attachment 289811View attachment 289812View attachment 289813
Interesting. Open one up and try smoking it.
 
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Apr 2, 2018
3,349
40,040
Idong,South Korea.
It’s all about marketing; as everyone knows sex sells. I learned long ago how to make my eBay listings appear at the top of the most common searches. Doesn't matter if your hawking old vinyl, vintage clothing, or that macrame bedspread the aunt you hated gave you for your wedding. I always add the words highly erotic, and available to mature buyers only somewhere in the listing title and/or description. Works every time.
Yep.
 

greeneyes

Lifer
Jun 5, 2018
2,255
12,593
For anyone interested, several letters from the American Briar Pipe Co., to M. B. Cannon, dated 1922, have appeared on eBay. There is a string of 5 letters, I think, and they tell a story of returned goods and balances due.

 

Briarcutter

Part of the Furniture Now
Aug 17, 2023
575
3,931
U.S.A.
Congratulations on your find and thanks to those that contributed the interesting information to this thread! Anyone discover what brand of pipe they made or was it just American briar pipe? Maybe shop pipes?
 
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greeneyes

Lifer
Jun 5, 2018
2,255
12,593
The eBay seller has since added more letters from the American Briar Pipe Co., in an attempt to collect a debt from Cannon and the most recent one is really amusing! And... temperamental! If I collected Cannon and/or ABPCo stuff I'd be all over these letters as they're great memorabilia. I wish stuff like this would surface for Ben Wade.
 

greeneyes

Lifer
Jun 5, 2018
2,255
12,593
This ad is from a 1924 issue of Tobacco and features a WDC Peerless. They may have been suppliers and/or manufacturers for WDC but that remains to be determined.
american briar pipe.jpg
 
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